Forced logout/loss of draft content

[Gumboots]

Just had a nasty experience with the forum logging me out, without warning me, while I was typing up a longish post. Result was that as soon as I tried to submit it I found out I was no longer logged in, and after I logged in again there was no way of going back to the content of the reply form. One lost post.

Is there anything that can be done about that? phpBB cookie length settings, perhaps? Really, session cookies shouldn't expire automatically, or at least not for several (8?) hours. They especially shouldn't conk out while you have a forum page open.

[Lama]

I made it a habit of never hitting submit on a forum without previously copy-pasting my post into notepad. For when the internet cuts out, for instance.

[Hawk]

Session time is 3600 seconds, or 1 hour.

[Gumboots]

Seems a bit on the short side, if it's not user-selectable.

[Hawk]

No. It's not user selectable.

If I'm not mistaken, every time you go to a new thread or a new page in the forum, basically refreshing your session, the session starts new.

[Wolverine@MSU]

I made it a habit of never hitting submit on a forum without previously copy-pasting my post into notepad. For when the internet cuts out, for instance.

I learned this one too, the hard way!

[Blackhawk]

You could also hit save draft occasionally while typing your message, or before you submit just open up a new browser tab/window and load something on the forums to make sure you're still logged in so when you go to submit that long message you don't lose it. Of course the notepad/wordpad method works just as well :)