Quote from scalingweb.com on May 12, 2026, 8:45 pm

Hi all,

Bit of context first — sharing this because I’m guessing a few of you have been here.

A few months back my Asgaros-powered forum got slammed by spam. Registration floodgates open, a couple thousand junk accounts created in a week, hundreds of throwaway topics, attachments uploaded to disk that nobody was ever going to look at. My options for cleanup, as far as I could find:

• Click each topic → Delete → confirm. For hundreds of them. One by one.
• Delete users in WP-admin — except Asgaros stores its content in its own wp_forum_* tables, so removing the WP user leaves all their forum topics orphaned with author_id = 0. Even worse.
• Drop into phpMyAdmin and start writing SQL, praying I don’t break referential integrity or forget to clean up wp_forum_uploads files on disk.

I looked for a plugin — nothing dedicated. Searched this forum and the wp.org support page and saw the same thing being asked for again and again over the years: bulk delete, mass moderation, per-user cleanup, “delete everyone who registered in the spam window but spare these admins.” The answer was always “not built yet” or “edit the database manually.” That stopped being an option around topic #200.

So I built it. Started with bulk delete, then realised that once I’d written the cascade logic for one user I had 80% of the plumbing for “delete topics older than X”, “moderate replies before they go live”, “send daily digests instead of one email per post”, “move that reply that ended up in the wrong topic” — features I kept seeing requested here. Scope creeped. Spent a few weeks polishing. Now it’s at a beta I’m comfortable showing.

Sharing it here in case any of you have hit the same wall, and to get feedback from people running Asgaros longer than me before I push it to wordpress.org.

Asgaros Extras is a free, GPL-licensed companion plugin. It doesn’t fork or modify Asgaros Forum — it sits alongside and only uses the documented hooks Thomas already exposes.

What’s in v0.1.0

• Bulk delete topics by date range, by author, by forum, or by status — with a confirmation preview so you see the full scope before pulling the trigger.
• Bulk delete user accounts with cascade (their topics, replies, uploads, reactions, reports, polls) — supports include/exclude modes so you can sweep abandoned/spam accounts while protecting admins, user ID 1, and the current user automatically.
• Bulk delete replies by author — and only replies. First-posts are never touched (so you never end up with a headless topic).
• Topics admin page inside wp-admin with search, forum/status filters, sortable columns, status badges, and bulk actions (approve, close, reopen, sticky, unsticky, delete).
• Pending replies queue — Asgaros currently supports topic-level approval but not per-reply approval. This adds it, with an optional “only the first N posts of new users need approval” rule.
• Auto user-group assignment based on WordPress role on registration, plus promotion rules (“after N days OR N posts, move from group X to group Y”) evaluated daily.
• Auto-subscribe to announcement forums with a GDPR-friendly opt-in checkbox at registration (or a forced mode if you’ve collected consent externally).
• Email digests (daily/weekly) via Action Scheduler — works on low-traffic sites where WP-Cron alone is unreliable. Customisable template with {author}, {topic_name}, {forum_name}, {excerpt}, {post_url} tokens.
• Editable forum/topic slugs from the admin with automatic 301 redirects from old URLs (new wp_ae_slug_redirects table tracks the mapping).
• Move / split / merge posts between topics. The post-mover has three modes and an async topic-search picker.
• Per-post edit history with a side-by-side diff viewer powered by wp_text_diff().
• Orphan-uploads fix — delete_post_files() exists in core but isn’t auto-wired to post deletion. I wire it on asgarosforum_before_delete_post, so every delete (mine, the core’s, or another plugin’s) cleans the filesystem.

What it’s tested with

• WordPress 6.0+
• PHP 7.4+
• Asgaros Forum 3.4.0 (current release)

Where to get the beta

• GitHub repo: https://github.com/bikker/Asgaros-Extras
• Direct ZIP: asgaros-extras-wp-0.1.0.zip → install via Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin
• The ZIP bundles Action Scheduler in vendor/ — no separate install needed. If WooCommerce or Yoast already loaded a newer copy, mine stands down automatically.

What I’d love feedback on

1. Conflicts — if you run other Asgaros extensions or heavy WP plugins (WooCommerce, BuddyPress, Polylang, etc.), does anything break? I’ve been careful to use only documented hooks but the community probably tests edge cases I missed.
2. Missing features — anything obvious I didn’t think of? The roadmap is open.
3. UI/UX — is the admin sidebar too crowded? Are the Settings tabs in a sensible order? Are the bulk operations clear about what they’ll actually do?
4. Naming — “Asgaros Extras” felt straightforward, but if the maintainer team would prefer a different name I’m happy to rename.
5. Anything I built that should not be opt-in by default (or vice versa).

Bug reports → GitHub issues (/issues). Broader feedback / discussion → here in this thread is great.

Note to Thomas and the Asgaros team

This is built with deep respect for Asgaros. The plugin extends, never replaces, and I’ve deliberately stayed clear of things you’ve already signalled a position on:

• Auto-subscribe is opt-in checkbox only — no silent enrolment (the GDPR concern you raised on GitHub #343 stands).
• I did not build “users can delete their own posts” — the spam vector you flagged on GitHub #75 is real, and after my own spam episode I’m not about to hand spammers a cleanup tool.
• “Private forums” stays untouched — your partial implementation is in core already and I’d rather not race it.

If anything overlaps with your roadmap or you’d prefer a different name, happy to coordinate. The goal is to fill admin gaps without fragmenting the ecosystem.

Thanks for building Asgaros. I use it daily.

Cheers,
Bikker — built with the team at Scalingweb