There is, as far as I can tell, a 10min timeout. If you have not pressed any buttons or links in 10min you are logged out.
If you have the 'remember me' ticked then it should automatically log you back in, which means you don't loose what you were in the middle of writing.
If the remember me is not working, then something is wrong at your end, and it usualy relates to cookie settings somewhere but I don't really know the details. Marty also said in the past that if you type 'orchidboard.com' rather than 'www.orchidbaord.com' into the address bar then the 'remember me' does not work correctly.
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However, on a personal note (without my moderator hat on for a momment), I also wish that there was not a time-out, or that I could set my own time-out.
Even with the 'remember me' it will loose the list of unread posts. So when I get distracted or a post takes a long time for me to write I loose track of where I have got to in reading the list of posts.
It happened to me just a few minutes ago when I was asked a question by someone and spent about 20min talking to them.
I know I can use the 'Today's Posts' option, but it...
a. will not jump me to the point within a thread I had got to.
b. will not indicate which I have read, often I will have read various ones that caught my eye when first logged in, then flick through everything else after. Once there has been a time-out I've lost track of what I have and haven't read.
c. sometimes it's been more than 24 hours since I last logged in (OK that is not often for me but it happens
) and if I then want to read everything I have to try and keep manual track of what I have and haven't read in each forum, while more stuff comes in, and I might have several time-outs in a few hours of reading.
A 'Last 48' hours', 'Last 5 days' type of option forum wide would help somewhat with that, even though it wouldn't know where in each thread I had got to, I would be able to work through the threads in a logical order.
I try and develop various tricks for stopping the time-out. When typing long posts (like this one) I have another tab to the orchid board front screen and I keep going to it and clicking refresh to keep my connection 'alive'. When hubby asks me to help with something while I'm in the middle of reading, I keep having to nip back to refresh the page so it knows I'm still there. Makes him think I'm obsessed
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Anyway, I don't think there is anything Marty can do to change these things. I believe it's part of the software to have this time-out, and he can only choose to enable or disable features already written into the software.
As said above, anyone finding they are loosing what they are in the middle of posting should probably try the 'remember me' option as that will at least stop that happening.