README

Discussion housekeeping that runs itself. Write rules that look inside chosen tags for discussions matching conditions (age, tags, reply count), then hide, lock, retag, move or delete them, so a busy section stays tidy without a moderator doing it by hand.

• Rules: each has a scope (one or more tags, or all of them), conditions, an action and its own run frequency.
• Conditions: inactive for, or created more than, N days ago; has or doesn't have certain tags; minimum or maximum replies. Every condition is optional, so a rule can match on tags alone, on inactivity alone, or any combination.
• Actions: hide, lock, unlock, add a tag, remove a tag, move (retag), or permanently delete.
• Works with Rubric thread prefixes. When Rubric is installed and enabled, rules can also match on a discussion's prefix (has any of these prefixes, doesn't have them, or has no prefix at all) and can set or remove a prefix. Without Rubric these options don't appear.
• Runs on a schedule, or when you say. Due rules run automatically, and any rule can be Run or Previewed on demand from the admin page.
• Global dry-run. Every rule, scheduled or on demand, logs what it would do and changes nothing. Turn it off when you're confident.
• Shows up in your audit log. Every live action fires Flarum's own events (hidden, deleted, tagged, locked), so audit-log and action-log extensions record Janitor's work, attributed to an admin. Previews never fire them.

Settings

Admin → Janitor:

• Global dry-run: when on, every rule only previews.
• Max actions per run: the most discussions a single rule acts on in one run. Default 100.
• Rules: add, edit, run, preview and delete rules.
• Recent actions: the log of everything Janitor did, or would have done.

Thread prefixes (Rubric)

With Rubric enabled, the rule editor shows each prefix as its own coloured label:

• Has prefix: discussions with any of the chosen prefixes.
• Does not have prefix: discussions with none of them, including ones with no prefix.
• Has no prefix at all: only unprefixed discussions.
• Set prefix replaces whatever prefix a discussion has. Rubric's own rule applies: a prefix limited to certain tags is never set on a discussion outside them, so those discussions are skipped. Discussions that already have the prefix are skipped too, so a rule doesn't redo its own work every run.
• Remove prefix clears it, usually with a Has prefix condition to choose which.

Preview and the global dry-run work for these the same way as for every other action. If Rubric is disabled later, rules that use prefixes match nothing until it's back; every other rule keeps running.

Good to know

• Protected by default. Stickied and locked discussions are left alone unless a rule opts in to include locked (say, archiving closed sale threads) or include stickied. The Unlock action always includes locked discussions.

• Delete is opt-in per rule, and permanent. Prefer Hide or Move: hidden discussions can be restored, deleted ones can't.

• Try a rule before trusting it. Leave the global dry-run on and use Preview to see exactly which discussions a rule would hit in the action log. A preview doesn't move the rule's schedule.

• "Inactive for N days" measures from the last post by default, which suits archiving stale threads in a busy tag.

• Automatic runs need Flarum's scheduler. Your server must run this cron entry once a minute:

  * * * * * cd /path/to/forum && php flarum schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

  Without it rules won't run on their own, though Run and Preview still work.

Installation

composer require ernestdefoe/janitor
php flarum migrate
php flarum cache:clear

Then enable Janitor in the admin panel and open its settings to add rules.

Updating

composer update ernestdefoe/janitor
php flarum migrate
php flarum cache:clear

Support

• Support forum: Janitor on ernestdefoe.online
• Flarum community: Janitor on discuss.flarum.org
• Bug reports: GitHub issues

Licence

MIT © ernestdefoe