Category Archives: Pastebin

Usage of pastebin expiry feature

The new expiry option has been live at pastebin.com for over 24 hours, it’s been interesting to see the usage patterns. There have been just under 2000 posts in the past day, breaking down as follows:

  • 33% expire in a day
  • 64% expire in a month
  • 3% never expire

In a few days I’ll take a look at some of the “permanent” posts to see what other features might be useful…in meantime, feel free to make suggestions by commenting below!

Pastebin 0.50 released – with expiry control

Pastebin was conceived as a way to post code into an IRC or IM conversation, so the post itself was thought to be quite ephemeral. Therefore, the database didn’t retain posts for very long. However, this has surprised some users, who expected a little more permanence.

I’ve rectified this in v0.50. There are three options to suit various users

  • expiry in a day – great for IRC or IM, where the post will be read pretty much immediately and then fall out of use
  • expire in a month – great for exploring code ideas or problems via email
  • never expire – the post lives forever. This is really for retaining code snippets you want to share with others.

I’m going to add more features that will make pastebin more useful for long term storage of code snippets, watch this space!

Download GPL’d source code, or just play with it at pastebin.com