XF 1.1 Help; Deleted Entire Forum

cbertozz

Member
Hi Guys
I stupidly deleted a live forum when trying to prune a duplicate!!

How can I recover a deleted Forum and the threads/posts within it?

Appreciate your help....anyone!

Thanks
 
Ok so that assumes that I have a backup service? Xenforo doesn't do anything automatically does it?
No, Xenforo doesn't back things up.

If you aren't making backups yourself, check with your host - some run backups of databases as part of the service.

If they don't and you haven't got any backup, then you've learned a valuable lesson today. ;)
 
OK so apparently we have nightly backups, is there a procedure that I need to follow to get the forum back - can I do it without affecting the rest of the site?
 
There's something you can try, but the problem is it's probably not recommended.

As funny as it may sound, before trying this you should do a full backup so that if this goes wrong, you can just go back to how you were now. Better to have more backups than you need :)

You might also want to wait and see if other people such as @Brogan or @Mike agree it's worth a try... I think Mike yesterday said something similar was NOT recommended.

You need to know the node ID of the forum you deleted. If your forum had the "URL portion" option configured, let me know as the instructions will be different.
  • Create a new, blank forum where the one you deleted was.
  • Once created, make a note of the NEW forum's node_id.
  • Using PHP My Admin or similar, find the xf_node table and find the NEW node in the list. Change the node_id value for the NEW node so it has the node_id of the DELETED node.
  • Still in PHP My Admin, find the xf_forum table and again, find the NEW node in the list. Change the node_id value so that the new node again, has the ID of the old node.
That *should* be enough to have those posts visible again. But you will need to go into Tools > Rebuild Caches and rebuild Forum information.

Again, you can try this if you wish, but make sure you do have your hands on a working backup before you do so.
 
There's something you can try, but the problem is it's probably not recommended.

As funny as it may sound, before trying this you should do a full backup so that if this goes wrong, you can just go back to how you were now. Better to have more backups than you need :)

You might also want to wait and see if other people such as @Brogan or @Mike agree it's worth a try... I think Mike yesterday said something similar was NOT recommended.

You need to know the node ID of the forum you deleted. If your forum had the "URL portion" option configured, let me know as the instructions will be different.
  • Create a new, blank forum where the one you deleted was.
  • Once created, make a note of the NEW forum's node_id.
  • Using PHP My Admin or similar, find the xf_node table and find the NEW node in the list. Change the node_id value for the NEW node so it has the node_id of the DELETED node.
  • Still in PHP My Admin, find the xf_forum table and again, find the NEW node in the list. Change the node_id value so that the new node again, has the ID of the old node.
That *should* be enough to have those posts visible again. But you will need to go into Tools > Rebuild Caches and rebuild Forum information.

Again, you can try this if you wish, but make sure you do have your hands on a working backup before you do so.

So should I be able to see the OLD forum in the in the xf_node table?
 
That's right.

It's also in the URL of the forum... so no doubt you'll be able to find it in your browser history, for example.

e.g. http://xenforo.com/community/forums/xenforo-questions-and-support.25/ This forum is node ID 25 because it ends in .25.

Hi Chris

Almost there - looks like the right stuff is in the database but can't get the forum to appear on the site. I've done all the rebuild stuff in the Tools page but its still not appearing. Any ideas ? I'm new to Xenforo
 
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