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Never used blogs (13 posts)

  1. drmike
    Member
    Posted 17 years ago #

    Greets again:

    Waiting for phpMyAdmin to load so I'll go ahead and post this.

    One of the annoyances I have is blogs that are never used. Someone came up a while back with a "plugin" that sends an email and all that but I would rather double check instead of having it done automatically.

    Plus, if they're used the blog once, they might come back sometime. :)

    I made a change in my wp-admin/wpmu-blogs.php file and I wanted to post it here.

    Open up the file and find the case "register": line about three quarters down. Change it to the following:

    case 'registered':
    $tmplast_updated = strtotime($blog[ 'last_updated' ]);
    $tmpregistered = strtotime($blog[ 'registered' ]);
    $tmpdifference = $tmplast_updated - $tmpregistered;
    ?>
    <td valign='top'><?php echo $blog[ 'registered' ] ?><br /><?php echo $tmpdifference ?></td>
    <?php
    break;

    What does this do? It puts the difference in seconds into the registered column between when the blog was registered and the last time it got updated.

    What does that tell you? Well, if the difference is 0 or 1, it's never been used. Ever. There's no way that the blog owner could have done anything within a second like that.

    About a 30? Chances are they've modified their theme or made a post or done something. Or they're a spammer. I would check.

    Thousands and more? The blog is probably active, either currently or in the past.

    Just going through and finding all those 0's and 1's took out about 250 blogs that had never been used. After the first 50 or so, I just started hitting deleted becuase none of the ones I looked at had been used. I looked at the <100 as well and about half of those were spam blogs.

    hope this helps,
    -drmike

  2. dizzy99
    Member
    Posted 17 years ago #

    Excellent tip and one i'm sure we'll all find handy. Thanks for sharing Dr.

  3. quenting
    Member
    Posted 17 years ago #

    I've pruned thousands this way. Only, why the need for this when you can just check whether last_updated is '0000-00-00' ?

  4. lunabyte
    Member
    Posted 17 years ago #

    To catch users that came in, tinkered around for a few, and then never came back?

  5. andrea_r
    Moderator
    Posted 17 years ago #

    Yep, this is useful. Or even cartching users that signed up, poked aroudn the backend, maybe changed the theme or default post, then left.

    if it's been three months, they aren't coming back and off they go.

  6. quenting
    Member
    Posted 17 years ago #

    Oh right, in fact in the version i run, changing the theme doesn't update that value. Even posting content in a page doesn't.

  7. lunabyte
    Member
    Posted 17 years ago #

    Yeah, Donncha's fixed that sometime recently. Big thumbs up for it too.

  8. drmike
    Member
    Posted 17 years ago #

    Only, why the need for this when you can just check whether last_updated is '0000-00-00'

    Also, just for reference, you shouldn't be seeing a last updated stamp of 0's. When a blog is created, the last updated is also the date registered.

    So, if they're both the same, you can tell nothing's ever been done to the blog. :)

    Gotta admit though I'm wondering about those with 3 second differences.

  9. lunabyte
    Member
    Posted 17 years ago #

    I dunno, I usually give someone 30 days to get the ball rolling. After 30 days, if it still only has hello world, or 1 post, I set it to archive. Then after another 3-4 weeks, if they haven't said anything, I remove it.

    Of course if it's a spam blog, or violates my TOS, then it's out immediately with no questions asked.

    I think the biggest problem I've seen lately isn't the traditional splogs, it's link whores. You know they type, I'm sure. There the ones that come on, and post 5 or so threads and add a bunch of links to their "main" website. Not like spamming porn, pills, or other crap, but simply trying to build up their PR with more sites linking to theirs.

    I've been deleting those too.

  10. andrea_r
    Moderator
    Posted 17 years ago #

    uh, yeah. had a few of those lately, when signups were on. Getting sneaky too, as in... "Here's my new blog, come visit my old blog until I get stuff moved here" and then three months go by....

  11. lunabyte
    Member
    Posted 17 years ago #

    Yep. I'm thinking about adding it to my TOS, just to be on the safe side. So when someone complains, they have no recourse. Not that they would anyway, since there's the "right to refuse service to anyone" deal. But still.

  12. andrea_r
    Moderator
    Posted 17 years ago #

    Yeah, make it idiot proof and the world builds a better idiot.

    I cannot even hazard a guess as to how much of a percentage of my life this has applied to.

  13. lunabyte
    Member
    Posted 17 years ago #

    Touche.

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