Permanently Removing a Product

Question

I want to remove products that are Out of Stock and we will will never receive it back in stock ever again. What is the best way to approach this? Some questions I have are;

1.)Should I delete the product from Magento all together? -Is a 301 redirect needed if I do this?

2.) Should I disable the product and set as 'Not Visible Individually', leaving it there forever? This can cause some clutter when analyzing stock situations. Isn't this the same as deleting it?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You should only delete the product if you are sure you will not only not make it available again but also that you don't care about any associated data about it.

Personally, if this product has been part of any order, I would disable it and not delete it.

Answer 2

I think the better way to do this is to setup a cron and create a script and make a condition there the products which is in out of stock and meet your condition then simply delete it from the store, that way you wont need to look for the out of stock product again and again in the store, this will be a automated process for you :)