Question Making forums read-only

I honestly think the best way to deal with the matters discussed in this topic is for the user to make all writeable categories "Review posts = Yes". In this way, messages will be seen by moderators (and have to be approved by moderators) before they appear on the forum.

There's no need to make some categories "read-only" according to certain times of the day. There's no need to make your forum a "nine-to-five" operation.

If your categories are configured so that new messages have to be approved before they appear on the forum then you won't encounter the sensitive issues that you've mentioned. The overnight "psychologically traumatic" messages will be waiting for the moderator first thing in the morning - like a kind of answering machine system - ready for the appropriate kind of attention/action. During the day, as new messages arrive, moderators can screen them before they appear on the discussion board. It's simple; it's easy-to-manage; it's effective.

I don't usually want to post SQL into our forum, but I made exception this time, as the question was very interesting.

You can change database tables in cron job. Here's the idea how you do it:

WARNING: Do not try to do this if you don't know what you are doing. I only posted the idea how to do it, so there's no way to get it to work without good knowledge on Cron Jobs (and MySQL).

offline.sql:
online.sql:
Offline script in Linux/Unix (does not work without modifying user, password and path to the file):
Online script in Linux/Unix (does not work without modifying user, password and path to the file):

Yes, that's an interesting idea, Matias. If I understand you correctly, this idea would result in taking the forum offline. If the forum is offline, ordinary users cannot use the forum to read any of the messages.

As I understand the user's request, the forum needs to operator to let users to read messages 24 hours a day but to prevent postings during certain times when there's no moderator on duty.

My suggestion is to make all categories "Review Posts = Yes" which basically means that all categories can be read any time but new messages will not appear on the forum until the moderators have reviewed and approved them. This, in my opinion, provides the best solution.

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your response. Our developer has scheduled a cron job that marks the forums at midnight set review posts = yes, which in turn then deactivates at 9am.

Cheers,
O

You could do that. If I were in your position, I would set all categories to "Review Posts = Yes" all the time. That way it doesn't matter.

If your users post something "inappropriate" while your moderators are on duty, they can intercept the messages, no approve them, and you've attended to the matter. If your moderators are not on duty, any overnight messages will be waiting there for your moderators to review when they're back again. Easy.

In hindsight, I wish I hadn't mentioned anything about cronjobs (as far as this particular issue is concerned).

Yes, I agree with Sozzled that cron jobs is not a good way to deal with this. Sleeping overnight brought a few issues into my mind:

1) what is no moderators are present during daytime?
2) what if conversation breaks because of it's 12PM, not because there are no moderators online?
3) forum gets totally closed when it's put offline -- you cannot even read the messages
etc..