Popup storage

I did make a post a while back now saying that I was about to cull the older popup messages which are held on our database since they were starting to occupy a lot of space. However, for a variety of reasons I didn't actually get round to doing it at the time and then subsequently rewrote a large part of the popup message software introducing, amongst other things, the capability to permanently store popup messages. This meant that they wouldn't be subject to culling.

Anyway, I have just made a start on writing the culling software as we now have around 70,000 popup messages in the database. I ran some initial queries and was somewhat surprised to see people had stored several hundred messages and in one case almost a thousand. So now I'm wondering if this might be due to not understanding how the popup messages are handled.

When you receive a popup message there are basically 3 things you can do with it in terms of storage:

1. delete it immediately

2. simply accept it (it will be kept until it gets culled when it becomes x days old)

or

3. store it permanently (it will never be deleted)


Given the explanation above, can I ask those who may have misinterpreted the "storage" facility to revisit their stored popups and if appropriate unstore them. You can do this by selecting individual or all popups on a page in the stored messages section and then clicking the Unstore button.

In the meantime we shall have to introduce a limit on the number of messages which can be stored permanently and anyone who has currently exceeded this will have to automatically have some messages unstored. The message storage facility is intended for messages of specific importance and should not be used simply for any/all messages that are received.

I am one of those people who store everything although the total number in my case is not that high. Why do I do that? Because I am basically a pack rat and I don't throw things away because I "might need them" sometime in the future. This is particularly true with anything to do with spanking.

The disadvantage of that is the clutter that results, in this case, the clutter in the Library's storage facilities. But it is also the reason that I have lots of old spanking material including all those old MR magazines from which I am sending in letters to the Library for others to enjoy. I stored them rather than discarded them.

Everything has its advantages and disadvantages.

Thanks for posting this, Februs. I (foolishly) didn't realize I could delete popups before I read this, and now I've gone back and deleted quite a storehouse of messages. Thank you for bringing it to everyone's attention, with an easy solution!

Well in a sense you don't necessarily need to delete them as they will get culled naturally UNLESS they've been placed in the "stored" section of your message archive...

OK. I confess. I'm something of a pack rat. I like to save all correspondence.
However.
It makes perfect sense to save the space for more important things so I have deleted all 1007 messages I had in storage.
Sorry.
Grin!

I was a bit confused by the different options available, so thanks for explaining it.

I'm afraid that I, too, had been guilty of storing what
turned out to be a ridiculous number of messages.
I am pleased to say that they have all gone!

I have a question for Februs. For those members who don't want to overburden the Library with stored messages but still want to save them, is there an easy way for the member to save them to a file in the member's computer hard drive before they are deleted from the Library? That would be the best solution for everybody.

Perhaps there is some charitable organization where we could donate these perfectly good popup windows? After all, they've only been used once and I really hate to just throw them away.

Please explain the difference between "save" and "store" as I have been using both indiscriminately recently