XF 1.5 Total message count gone bad!

[chrisg78]

Hi, Our total message count, as displayed in our index page statistics box has gone to pot this week.
We had over 25,000 posts last Tuesday and it has displayed 24,560 this Monday and today 24,100.

We've looked at the deletion logs and nothing seems to have been deleted without us knowing.
If I manually add up all the messages in the tools>monthly statistics section, it's still over 25,000 so it seems they are still there, just not being counted.

Is there a specific area to rebuild that would fix this?
Any ideas why it's doing this or have a simple solution?

Cheers.

 

[Mike]

The total is the sum of the totals from the per forum counters. Those are in turn a sum of the thread counters within. Those will be based on the posts in those threads.

You can rebuild threads and then rebuild forums in the control panel. You'll then need to wait for the next cache update. If that doesn't resolve the issue, then that would seem to imply that the posts aren't there are aren't visible.

You mentioned the deletion log, though I assume you mean the moderator log. That won't log actions by regular users, so if a user was able to delete a large number of their posts, the change in counters would be expected. If this is what happened, you may want to consider applying edit time limit permissions (which also prevents deletion after that time).

 

[chrisg78]

Thanks @Mike
We'll have a go at rebuilding the threads and forums and see if that makes a difference.
That's a good tip to change the edit time limit permissions, cheers.

 

[chrisg78]

@Mike
Rebuilding everything did not solve the issue.
We will be manually counting the data tables to see if the posts are actually there and this is just a counting issue, or have been deleted (unlikely).
When you say "wait for the next cache update" do you mean the Cron job that updates the post counts?

This issue coincides time-wise with me creating a new forum that only a select number of members can access/see. I created a new user group and gave them permissions that allow posting in that forum. Could it be something like when they post in there, for some reason none of their previous posts are then being counted towards the total? But as you say it's posts that are located on the forums that are counted, not from user's post totals.
Could be a total red herring but seems a coincidence. :/

 

[Mike]

If you rebuilt the threads and then the forums, then the totals won't be off for the number of visible posts. Any differences from raw counts in the DB would relate to threads/posts which aren't visible (likely deleted).

When you say "wait for the next cache update" do you mean the Cron job that updates the post counts?

Correct.

This issue coincides time-wise with me creating a new forum that only a select number of members can access/see.

That would really be a total coincidence. The totals in that forum wouldn't change the totals in any other forum.