Is it safe with Elgg 1.7 to delete user accounts?

I read that it was not safe to delete user accounts with earlier versions of Elgg. It was advised to ban accounts instead. A user asked me to delete his account and I'm unsure if it's safe now - currently my site is running on 1.7.3.

  • I have deleted spammers and their content no problems so far. I hadn't thought about keeping content which may be necessary at some point. Would be great obviously if when you deleted gave you options to delete that users data, maybe which type data and how far back.

  • Well, instead of removing the user, just "ban" the user. No need of extra coding, it is an admin tool. The content will stay on your site, but the profile won't be accessible and the user banned won't be abe to login.

     

    Rodolfo Hernandez

    Arvixe/Elgg Community Liaison

  • Like @rjcalifornia said, just "ban" and this will keep the users content.  Another thought is to change the wording of "ban" to "disabled".  So if a member requests to be deleted they won't be "tagged" as banned, instead their account is "disabled"...  

  • Is the profile page of banned users really inaccesible by regular members?

    As I already said, banning ("disabling") might not always be the best solution. If a dummy account could be introduced by a plugin it might help in some situations.

  • yes, it is inaccesible by regular members. Just the content stays.

    Rodolfo Hernandez

    Arvixe/Elgg Community Liaison

     

  • @II - ;-( the code was not incorporated as a PlugIn but rather custom code in relevant other PlugIns (Profile, etc) and setting up the data triggers to cater for access situations for "InActive" members - so that these  users would be effetively "banned", not be able to access Elgg, while all their content remained attached wherever these were originally input. The original idea was to allow a user to "ban" themselves off the site.

  • When a user is banned, he still gets information when using groupmail/massmail

    elgg 1.7.3

  • @knewSense and it will also show in your site members list. which is not a right thing try something like it disable your account or hide your account from everybody and show anonymous in front of your contents.

    @TahoeBilly If your is new then it is ok to delete but if your is old and he has created some groups and blogs, want to remove its account then it may be mess up lot of things if you delete that user.

  • I forgot about this and deleted a member. I am really stupid now since I don't have a backup copy to restore from. I tried to use Cash's dbvalidator but I can not activate his plugin,when trying it just redirects me to the homepage. So I am stuck. Is there another way to fix the DB? I have 1.7.4 and can not upgrade to 1.8 due to mods that were made to the profile

    Steve

  • Did you deleted it from the db? You could use Cpanel DB repair. (Hosting DB Repair Tool)

    Rodolfo Hernandez

    Arvixe/Elgg Community Liaison