DNN went to soft deleting users. Great. Now that I'm done testing a sub portal I want to delete all the bogus users.

I have read numerous posts that include SQL statements that supposedly hard delete user accounts, but none of them seem to work - actually it's more likely that I don't know enough about SQL queries to make them work!

Can anyone PLEASE provide a clear step by step set of instructions on how to completely hard delete user accounts from the DNN database? (Hint: pretend like you're teaching a newbie that knows enough to create serious havoc    ;->     )

Mitchell,  THANKS!  That's actually what I was looking for - was the specific list of tables where the user account information hides.  I can bring up the diagrams and see how the relations flow - and this will work for the occasional one or two users, but is there a "sure-fire-silver-bullet" script that will automate this process  (one that will work and not throw syntax errors at me all the time)? 

There are some threads on why the soft-delete approach was used rather than a hard-delete.  A soft-delete is not ideal since you can't re-use the names (or emails if you don't allow duplicates), but there were some VERY good reasons why they went with a soft-delete.


You'll have to check the older threads on the topic, but I think it has to do with all of the other modules in DNN.  Modules may store User Id's rather than the actual user information (e.g. store user id 123 and reference the DNN Users table to get the info for that user when you need it).  If a user is hard-deleted you now lose that information for user 123.  Say it was forums, where do you get the name, email, phone number for the person who submitted the post if their account has been hard-deleted.  Or a helpdesk where clients post problems.  There account is hard-deleted in DNN so all you have is user 123 submitted this ticket, but you can't get any info about them.

Sure the modules could store this info in their own tables, some do I'm sure.  But if they don't, and DNN switches to a hard-delete, you're in for a nightmare with the modules that store User Id's.

Like I mentioned, there are some good threads on the reasons they went with the soft-delete.  They give great info and reasoning behind the decisions.  I'd check there for more/better info if you need it.