More gripes

[studiot]

It can take me 20 minutes or more to compose/enter a proper and sensible post such as the one I just made in the 'outliers' thread.

By the time it is ready I find myself logged out, which is very annoying.

This also used to happen with the old system but the dropout time was longer.

Can the dropout time be reset upwards?

 

 

[Lord Antares]

You don't keep the ''keep me logged in'' checked? i have no problems when I'm constantly logged in. Of course you might have your reasons why you don't want to stay logged in though.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I just tested logging in without "Keep me logged in" checked, and the cookie was set to expire in November. So there shouldn't be such a rapid timeout.

Are you on an ISP which frequently changes your IP address? If your IP changes, you'll be logged out. That was the case with the previous version too, so maybe you got unlucky with an IP change this time. I can disable the IP address check, though I'm not sure of the security implications.

[studiot]

 

11 minutes ago, Cap'n Refsmmat said:

I just tested logging in without "Keep me logged in" checked, and the cookie was set to expire in November. So there shouldn't be such a rapid timeout.

Are you on an ISP which frequently changes your IP address? If your IP changes, you'll be logged out. That was the case with the previous version too, so maybe you got unlucky with an IP change this time. I can disable the IP address check, though I'm not sure of the security implications.

Thanks for the interest.

Resources are currently limited since I am in the remote north of Scotland, but I don't think it is dictated by the ISP.

The internet is a subcontractor to British Telecom Fibre and runs television etc just fine over the broadband.

 

This PC is just a small acer aspire one netbook with Windows 7.

 

I don't normally login here until I need to respond to something.

This morning I logged in specifically to type in the response in the outlier thread and I found out that I was logged out by the time I had finished it.

So yes, this is a different IP from the one in Somerset normally used, but that is not a fixed IP.

Happily the typing was not lost after I logged back in again but it was a nuisance.

Edit this post took 10 - 15 minutes because I had to answer the phone midway, but did not drop me.

Edited August 7, 2017 by studiot

[Manticore]

Doesn't seem to be anything to do with cookies. My browser is set to delete all cookies at the end of a session. If I've checked "Keep me logged in" then I still get automatically logged in when I come here. I connect via a cellmodem so the IP address is different every time - that doesn't seem to affect it either.

[Sensei]

Session time out, is different thing than cookie expiration date..

The session record is stored on the server, and the cookie is stored in the client's web browser.

Server (used to run forum) after user logging in the first time, is typically storing logging date and time in session database record.

Then when user is active (visiting pages), session record is updated to new time.

When user is not active for enough long time, session database record is removed from session database, and user is automatically logged off.

If it would not be done this way, you could not have list of currently active users on the right-bottom panel. Plentiful people simply don't press "log off", just close browser (or power off computer on purpose or accidentally). And server would not have idea that user is no longer active.

 

 

 

Edited August 7, 2017 by Sensei

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

After a bit of further research, it seems the current session expiration time is 24 minutes: if you haven't done anything in 24 minutes, PHP will expunge your session records. studiot, maybe you could do a quick experiment by logging in, setting a 25-minute timer, and seeing if you're logged out when you return?

If so, that's something I can tweak in our configuration. I'm not sure whether it changed since the previous version, but we did change PHP versions, so maybe something is different now.

[Klaynos]

[offtopic]Which part of Somerset? Devonian here. [/offtopic]

[studiot]

3 hours ago, Cap'n Refsmmat said:

After a bit of further research, it seems the current session expiration time is 24 minutes: if you haven't done anything in 24 minutes, PHP will expunge your session records. studiot, maybe you could do a quick experiment by logging in, setting a 25-minute timer, and seeing if you're logged out when you return?

If so, that's something I can tweak in our configuration. I'm not sure whether it changed since the previous version, but we did change PHP versions, so maybe something is different now.

Thanks, I will try this during the evening while something good like the Lone Ranger is on the box and report back.

Quote

sensei

And server would not have idea that user is no longer active.

There are plenty of religious users I would like to render inactive.

Then I might be able to find some actual Science on this forum.

There are some 2 or 3 hour periods when all that happened was religious nonsense today.

[Lord Antares]

5 minutes ago, studiot said:

Then I might be able to find some actual Science on this forum.

There are some 2 or 3 hour periods when all that happened was religious nonsense today.

Agreed. And it's not just religion. It can be empty philosophy, pointless ethics (like the definition of good or evil) and lots of politics. I've lowered my frequency of visit because I simply cannot find threads I enjoy reading. I love to learn from reading scientific threads with only technical content.

[StringJunky]

17 minutes ago, studiot said:

Thanks, I will try this during the evening while something good like the Lone Ranger is on the box and report back.

There are plenty of religious users I would like to render inactive.

Then I might be able to find some actual Science on this forum.

There are some 2 or 3 hour periods when all that happened was religious nonsense today.

 

7 minutes ago, Lord Antares said:

Agreed. And it's not just religion. It can be empty philosophy, pointless ethics (like the definition of good or evil) and lots of politics. I've lowered my frequency of visit because I simply cannot find threads I enjoy reading. I love to learn from reading scientific threads with only technical content.

Make an activity stream in the Create New Stream option with all you desired topics ticked, minus religion. Name the stream and save it. select your newly made stream and bookmark the page into your bookmarks bar. No more religious threads. Here's an image of the relevant section with a few choices chosen.

 

[Lord Antares]

Thanks for that. I might do it but my gripe wasn't that I couldn't filter the unwanted threads, it's that there were few that I wanted to click at. This filter will only save me the trouble of reading a thread title which I will discard, but it won't help with the lack of technical threads. Again, it's just my opinion, people can post what they want.

[StringJunky]

5 minutes ago, Lord Antares said:

Thanks for that. I might do it but my gripe wasn't that I couldn't filter the unwanted threads, it's that there were few that I wanted to click at. This filter will only save me the trouble of reading a thread title which I will discard, but it won't help with the lack of technical threads. Again, it's just my opinion, people can post what they want.

Right. The topic distribution of threads changes like the weather and that's just the dynamic of the forum and the people that come here. You can be strict, like Physics Forums, on demanding certain subject matter but do people want SFN like that? 

[studiot]

test started 2030 Scottish time

[studiot]

test ended 2100 Scottish time

Edit

So login maintained for 30 minutes will test again for 45 minutes.

Edited August 7, 2017 by studiot

[Sensei]

9 hours ago, studiot said:

There are plenty of religious users I would like to render inactive.

Then I might be able to find some actual Science on this forum.

Indeed, in the past we had plentiful more, much more science advanced members, with quite nice scientific speculations.. Kramer for example.

 

Edited August 8, 2017 by Sensei

[Externet]

In other forums that use this same 'architecture';  when being logged-in times out, all typed contents in the reply box get saved automatically, actually happens every minute while logged; and reported being so.  After re-logging-in, prompts the choice to restore saved content.  That saves a lot of frustration from losing very elaborated responses wiped out to never recover.

Perhaps that feature is hidden to be implemented among all the tweaks.