UPDATE: Expert Review Request – Timeline Cleanup Script Ready for Feedback!

Happy New Year 2026 to the entire UNA community! 🎉 Wishing everyone a prosperous year ahead! ✨

**Quick status:** Power outage + personal commitments delayed testing, but now **urgent** due to storage limits on a live production site. Currently restoring an old backup for staging.

**What I need from UNACMS experts (@LeonidS @unateam @Developers App India @CluBDeveloper @AQB Soft @Jerome Mingo and @Andrey Yasko ):**

**Does this approach look safe/sound for UNA 14?**

Code Snipped --------------

delete_old_timeline_posts.php is attached to this thread

Key improvements

• Dry-run mode: First run shows exactly what would be deleted without touching anything.
• ​

Deployment steps

text
1. Save as /var/www/html/delete_old_timeline_posts.php
2. chmod 755 /var/www/html/delete_old_timeline_posts.php
3. touch /var/log/timeline_cleanup.log && chmod 666 /var/log/timeline_cleanup.log
4. Test: php /var/www/html/delete_old_timeline_posts.php
   → Check log for "dryRun: YES" results
5. If good: edit $dryRun = false; and $daysOld = 14;
6. Add cron: 0 3 * * * /usr/bin/php /var/www/html/delete_old_timeline_posts.php >/dev/null 2>&1
7. Monitor logs for 7 days
8. Then: $daysOld = 60;

Quick checks before running

Run these on your DB to preview:

sql
-- How many old posts?
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM bx_timeline_events WHERE type='post' AND date < UNIX_TIMESTAMP() - (86400*14);

-- Sample old posts
SELECT id, owner_id, object_id FROM bx_timeline_events WHERE type='post' AND date < UNIX_TIMESTAMP() - (86400*14) LIMIT 5;

-- Files linked to old events?
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM bx_files_2_timeline ft JOIN bx_timeline_events e ON ft.timeline_id = e.id 
WHERE e.type='post' AND e.date < UNIX_TIMESTAMP() - (86400*14);

​

Cascading deletes: Handles comments (bx_timeline_cmts), notifications (bx_ntfs_*), and files (bx_files_2_timeline, bx_files).

​

Per-event processing: Safer than bulk delete, logs each step.

Comprehensive logging: Full audit trail in /var/log/timeline_cleanup.log.

File cleanup: Removes DB entries for attached media (physical files need storage module cleanup if not automatic).

**Key questions:**

1. Will deleting old `bx_timeline_events` (type='post') cascade properly to related tables? (`bx_timeline_cmts`, `bx_ntfs_*`, `bx_files_2_timeline` / `bx_files`)

2. Any hidden dependencies or modules that recreate timeline entries?

3. File storage: Does UNA auto-delete physical files when `bx_files` rows are removed, or do we need extra hooks?

4. Better way via Studio app / API / cron service?

**My plan:**

1. Test dry-run on staging (old backup) → share results

2. Live: Phase 1 (14 days), monitor 7 days → Phase 2 (60 days)

3. Cron: daily 03:00 with lock/logging

**Goal:** Safe auto-pruning of timeline posts >60 days to control disk growth.

Your expert eyes would save weeks of trial/error! 🙏

#timeline #cleanup #storage #una14 #developers