Timeout period

[Mayhem]

Any chance of increasing the "timeout" period on the forum? I was typing a PM to someone and by the time I was done, the timeout had invoked, and I lost all the pointers to the previous posts I hadn't read yet on the forum. Is it set to 15 minutes or less? Maybe increase it 30 minutes...

[Powder]

Pardon my ignorance, but what are you talking about?

[Mayhem]

If you spend a certain length of time on the forum without any activity (and by activity, that's clicking the mouse on links and visiting new pages, it doesn't count typing a reply in the reply window), then the software assumes you are dormant and attempts to log you out.

Those who have persistent logins then get immediately relogged back in. However your "last visited" time in the top right is updated to reflect this time instead, and any posts you hadn't read before this time are now marked as "read" instead. So you can only see new posts since the new log in time.

As I mentioned, I was typing a PM to someone before I had read posts on the forum, and I went over the timeout period. So when I came to view the forum after sending the PM, the only new posts marked were those from the new time instead. I had to manually figure out what threads and posts were new to me (as in I hadn't read them) but the forum thought I had seen.

Hence my suggestion to raise the timeout period length.

[Powder]

Huh. I see. Never had that issue myself so I was a bit confused. Thanks for the tip.

[Krang]

Yes, the current setting is 15 minutes. Unfortunately, we can't increase that, because longer sessions mean more entries in the sessions table in the database, which makes us take up more resources on the server.

However, I've run into the same problem sometimes, so I made this page (http://forums.thetechnodrome.com/_keepalive.html). Leave it open in a background tab, and you won't be logged out. Don't mind the "Invalid Thread specified" error message, it's just a random page to keep the session active.

[Mayhem]

Fair enough, I'll bear this workaround in mind if I need it :tsmile:

[***First of Two Latin Kings***]

I actually tried to reply to this thread and got the time out message :tlol:

What I would suggest to you guys is that you keep your email open in another window or a word document open, and copy and paste periodically if you are writing/editing a long PM or a long post as a back-up in case you time-out. I know certain forums (like Ivey's) allow you to log in indefinitely if you want, most TMNT forums don't get the amount of traffic that this one seems to (hence my efforts not to be banned).