Logged off while posting a reply

[Jesse Goldbaum]

This is the second time when I go to post I'm prompted to log in again (it's not like the session was idle either). When I do log back in I get a blank screen. Below is the "source" screen shot.

[Dick Berg]

Jesse, I have had similar experiences in the past. In fact, when i was writing the reply to your post about the A2.0, i had been logged out automatically, and when I logged in I got a white screen too instead of the posted message. This is intermittent, though, because on other times when I logged back in the post had been actually posted, and the screen appeared.

I don't know anything about the forum software. I'm just a user of it, like you. I do know that there is an automatic logout after a certain time, which seems to me to be variable (sometimes 5 minutes and then logged out, other times 20 minutes and still logged in). It's a little quirky, that's all. It makes sense to do that so that users who walk away (unintentionally forgetting to log off) will not tie up the system.

The auto save is a mystery to me, too.

[Jesse Goldbaum]

Thanks for getting back. I'm never quite sure whether it's something unique to my computer configuration, something more general, or as my friends advise, something with me

[Bob Denny]

It has happened once to me too. I have no clue why it happens. What I do if I am going to post a lengthy reply is compose it in Notepad then paste it into the form. Ugly but useful.

[Jesse Goldbaum]

Can you open a ticket about this w/(is it) vBulletin?

[Bob Denny]

Let me first do some research, this must be happening to others. It has only happened to me once, and I often leave this forum open for hours.

[Bob Denny]

The auto-save works. I had to read help to see how. You start a fresh reply to a message that you were replying to and which got lost. Then you should see the restore button like this:

Snap1.png

Clicking it will cause the last auto-saved text to appear, and the button will disappear.

[Jesse Goldbaum]

Thanks. To be sure it seems to be an intermittent problem making it hard to predict when it'll happen. I'd say it happens to me about 30% of the time and it seems uncorrelated w/screen/keyboard activity, i.e. I'm editing away and it's only when I attempt to post (so I'm like now you tell me?) that I get the you've been logged off message. A related issue is that when you are logged off and you log back in you get a blank/empty/absolutely useless screen.

[Bob Denny]

I wonder... what browser are you using? Do you have any "security" add ons that might limit the lifetime of a cookie or the lifetime of the HTTP/1/1 "basic" authentication info that is cached when you log into a site?

[Bob Denny]

Ah, I found the setting for the system. If you think you might have left it for over a half hour, that would be it. The current limit is 30 minutes. That seems like a long time to leave a partial post up there. If you don't have something installed like a security plugin or add on that would be messing with the cookie expirations, then this should be 30 minutes.

If you do require more than 30 minutes to complete a post, I will extend this.