All my posts from the Beginning

I'll have to look into it and see, but I think vBulletin auto-archives everything beyond 500 posts for a given user.

No, what happens is whenever a search is performed (for a given user's posts) the database is queried looking for them all. Once the first 500 results are returned, the query is terminated. This is done to prevent server problems.

Understand, some boards have millions of posts and can bring a server to it's knees when such queries are performed. vBulletin, being built to handle such large discussion boards has it hard-coded to stop after 500 hits are returned.

The flip side of that is we're on a Shared Server, meaning that one server may handles many different websites. If one website causes a server to freeze, or have to be rebooted due to bad/sloppy code then you become VERY UNPOPULAR with your (web) neighbors on a shared server.

A Small Orange (our hosting company) watches for spikes in server demands and after a few uh-oh's they'll email the account owner and ask WHAT's GOING ON with your website? If you don't promptly get it fixed or stop doing whatever's causing EVERYone else's websites on the shared server to function slowly then they'll put you into a time-out until you get things running right again.

So in short, I guess you could say it's a compromise we live with.

 

Well, yes and no. vBulletin has an Advanced Search option (see screen prints below) that allows you to search for msgs over a year old, but no way to bracket a timeframe such as you mentioned.(i.e. say between 2 and 3 years old)

That's in it's STOCK configuration anyway. When I have some time, I'll look to see if someone's written a MODification for vB that gives one even more advanced options to choose from.

Good question though. Are you needing/wanting a listing of all your own threads or posts? If so, my suspicion is an Administrator may have more behind the scenes capability to search out something like that and port it into a file of some sort.

Nope, scratch that last idea. Just tried it and my own search for all your posts topped out at 500 too. However, at this point in time, you ought to be able to use the 'older than a year' option under Advanced Search and probably get the remaining 285 posts or so you want to see.

I'm not much on query language, but I'm sure a proficient administrator could issue a query directly to the message database and bypass the 500 limit to get an overall listings of historical posts. However, not being proficient at such myself that's just a guess.

 

I just wanted to update this inquiry, with some more current XenForo information.

Whenever you use the Search... box, in the bottom right-hand corner you'll see an additional drop down menu available. If you'll click the small triangle next to the More... button, you'll see this...

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Useful Searches is a really quick-n-easy way to find Your Threads, Your Posts or even Your Conversations that you are involved in.

When you scroll down to the bottom of the last page of the search results, you will see a new LINK indicating that you can continue the search to Find older messages…



That will give you several more pages of even older messages and again, on the last page of those search results you will see the same LINK yet again. As such, this allows everyone to search back as far as they want/need to in looking for any of their earliest posts on the board here.

NOTE: Here is a way to see your last 100 posts instantly!