auto log off period much too short

[SSSdave]

Many web forums have a timer after one logs on to create posts. If one delays too long they may find themselves logged off. Sometimes that annoyingly occurs just after bothering to compose a post. The timer on this forum appears to be ridiculously short at this time. Twice I logged on this morning and after a modest period crafting a post, when submitting the post, the logged off message instead appeared.

The annoying thing is there is at that point no way to recover what one had written unless one editing elsewhere say in Notepad and then transferred the text in at the end. I in fact tend to do that much of the time just for that reason.

Please increase that TIME OUT period to something reasonable for us that bother to write more than inane one-liners.

[ERIC]

Many web forums have a timer after one logs on to create posts. If one delays too long they may find themselves logged off. Sometimes that annoyingly occurs just after bothering to compose a post. The timer on this forum appears to be ridiculously short at this time. Twice I logged on this morning and after a modest period crafting a post, when submitting the post, the logged off message instead appeared.

The annoying thing is there is at that point no way to recover what one had written unless one editing elsewhere say in Notepad and then transferred the text in at the end. I in fact tend to do that much of the time just for that reason.

Please increase that TIME OUT period to something reasonable for us that bother to write more than inane one-liners.

1) The maximum time to submit forms (for those who bother) was set to 120 hours. I have changed it to unlimited, and have confirmed that all other session fields are set to the most accommodating and lengthy settings.
2) Please consider the possibility that the problem just may in part be on YOUR END, and if that's the case, I'm going to need information about your operating system, platform and security settings if the problem persists.

[BSquared]

I am one who takes entirely too long to edit, re-edit, discard, recast, reword, and generally dither with my posts, and I've never been logged off this board (although I have been logged off of several other systems because of my nit-picky habits). Therefore, I think Eric's suggestion is probably correct: there's something going on with SSDave's system that's different from others—at least different from mine!

[SSSdave]

Hi Eric,

Interesting, you are indicating a very long period so something else logged me out of this site. So indeed there is something else going on. A question might be, under what circumstances is a visitor logged off with this forum software? Obviously not due to some kind of timer as I expected.

My memory is too vague to say this has happened before on this board with any certainty though it definitely does occur on some other boards within say a half hour. In both cases today I was logged in then opened a thread, was in the HST editing window, and had entered a couple paragraphs that took maybe 20 minutes the first time and 5 to 10 the second attempt. In both cases when submitting the post, your software responded with a message that I recall vaguely indicating I was not allowed to make a post because I was not logged in. I then hit the IE back button that should have returned me to the editing window. Instead another window appeared I am also vague about complaining about the page no longer being available. Of course some software inhibits returning to previous pages under some circumstances. After returning to the forum menu and re-entering the thread and the Reply button, what I had written was of course gone.

So at that point I submitted the above message that was also a test if I could post at all. I was using a Vista 64-bit machine and the IE7 browser. In the future, will be composing messages on an external window and pasting text in when submitting. If the above occurs I will try and record details.

David

[rlown]

never hit the IE back button. and if you are typing stuff into a response, when you get close to your goal of posting, cntl-c the post. you can cntl-v post it back into the form. For big posts, yes, notepad, and then copy back.

[ERIC]

In the future, will be composing messages on an external window and pasting text in when submitting. If the above occurs I will try and record details.

Thanks for the specs, David. Yes, keep me posted if it continues to occur. In the meantime, I'll use the details you provided to search around to see if others using the same forum platform have experienced a similar problem and if there might be a solution.

[ERIC]

never hit the IE back button. and if you are typing stuff into a response, when you get close to your goal of posting, cntl-c the post. you can cntl-v post it back into the form. For big posts, yes, notepad, and then copy back.

Sound advice, regardless of forum platform.