I just joined up, and I don’t see a place to log out. I’ve got all sorts of kids, friends, who have occasional access to my computer, and I’d like to log out so they can’t explore my account, or post here. Is there a logout button or something?
Click on the circle top right for your user name. The bottom right item on the list, Profile, has a LOG OUT option.
Thank you.
Not sure what the “circle” is. Here is what mine looks like:
It depends on theme, I think. It’s just your character avatar doohickey, which is in a square frame for some themes but a circle frame for others. I just noticed that for at least one theme, it’s a round-cornered square. Whoa!
OP, just click on @Whack-a-Mole 's face.
@GailForce my laptop is running the Windows OS and I’ve created two user profiles, one for Bullitt and one for Guests. Your OS should have a similar capability. Just have your — uhh, — guests use the Guest account and you shouldn’t have that trouble.
At first I thought you meant two user profiles for the SDMB, and I was going to say, “No, don’t do that! We aren’t allowed to have multiple user profiles here on the SDMB!”
Oh, perhaps I could have stated that more clearly. Yes I was talking about separate login profiles on the OS, not to the SDMB!
Separate login profiles on the OS would also protect the OP’s other accounts, like Amazon for example.
So apparently, the designers of this forum SW thought this log-out procedure is more “discoverable” than simply putting a “log out” button on top-corner of page?
What’s the reasoning, or user-interface design/usability philosophy, behind that?
This message board is based on the Discourse platform which is an open source platform for many, many websites. Presumably they decided this was the best way and not those who run this forum.
I suspect the developers don’t consider logging out to be a highly used option. They prioritized the notification features. They moved the “account” options into the notifications menu, making it the last “tab.”
It’s not actually all that unusual not to have a top level log out button. It is usually on some sort of dropdown menu. But it is rare that you have to then click on another button. Still, it’s not completely undiscoverable for people familiar enough to realize that those icons on the side are different tabs.
So, to sum up, they had other priorities besides making it easy to log out.
See here:
To be fair, that’s about usability, not discoverability. Two clicks is, I agree, not too much for such an uncommon feature.
But I also understand why the OP didn’t find it. First off, unless you have a notification badge, it’s not entirely obvious that you can click on your avatar, especially since there’s a hamburger button right beside it that we know we can click on.
And when you can click on your avatar, usually that shows you account-related things. Usually a bell is used for notifications. But Discourse decided to combine both menus into one, with submenus. And it considers notifications to be priority. You have to then click another icon to get to the actual account menu, and thus the log out option.
Maybe there are other sites that do this, but I checked the ones I use and didn’t find one.
I was gonna suggest that same trick.
If you just log out, your browser might remember your login info and let someone else log in using that.
Good idea to worry about the situation, though, as one poster found to his chagrin, a while back. It was baaaaad.
I’m starting to wonder if it is like that Eagles’ song. “You can check out anytime you like but you can never leave.” Humor can be found in these parts, too.