At work I use a special version of Mozilla, which has cookie problems, so I get logged out randomly all the time. This isn’t the problem - there is no way you can fix this, and it happens with other sites also.
A minor bug associated with this is when I get logged out in the middle of composing a reply. The behavior then is:
I get the login page.
I relogin
I get a page saying I am at an illegal thread. (I can get the exact details next time it happens.)
It is minor since hitting back a few times to get to the reply page, and then hitting submit, works reliably. This never causes duplicate posts.
I suspect this might be something to report to vBulletin. Again, I never lose a post when this happens, so this is for informational purposes only. I wonder if it happens to anyone else.
Next time that happens to you, could you send me information about it?
Where exactly you were, what kind of message you get, what you’re using to access the site (browser/operating system).
No promises this is fixable but we can look at it, track it, report it.
Since vB was written for Internet Explorer, conflicts with other browsers is unfortunately common. Haven’t looked lately but in the past vB’s attitude has been if there’s a conflict it’s the responsibility of the writers for the browser in question to come up with fixes and not them at vB. (This is why vB works so horribly with, say, WebTV. To name just one.)
Will do. Since my browser got modified by my company, you won’t even be able to reproduce the problem. However, in the code for logging in, I suspect the possibility that you’re in the “hit submit” state is not considered - which should be more or less browser independent. No browser but mine is likely to be so braindead as to log you out then, though.
BTW, this never happens to me at home where I use Firefox.
I think I can force a fail by doing a reply, and then going and doing something useful for a while before I hit submit.
Took a while for this to happen again, but here is the screen I got:
vBulletin Message
Invalid Thread specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the webmaster
<Forum jump box here>
All times are GMT -8. The time now is 10:26 AM.
This showed up when I clicked submit after making a response. I was logged in when I started. If I am not logged in when I start the response, it sends me to the login page, then returns me to the response page, and everything works fine.
I’m using Mozilla 5.0 here. And yes, I’m sure the problem is cookies, but it is the way this version of the browser does cookies, and there isn’t anything I can do about it. But as I said, logging out is not the issue, getting lost when I get logged out in the middle of a response is.
I went to one of our tech people for help, who pointed out that we don’t have a lot of control over how people’s browsers do things. Impossible to reproduce and as such hard to diagnose and fix.
There are two issues here. The first is that I get logged out randomly. As I said, this issue is a browser issue, does not happen for the standard one I use at home, and is completely beyond your control. I only mentioned it to give full information about how I wound up in the situation.
The second issue, which is a bug in vBulletin no doubt, is sensitized by my getting logged out in the middle of composing a post - which probably happens to no one else. As a programmer, my guess is that my state is getting trashed by the sequence <Compose> - <Login expires> <Relogin>
I doubt this has anything to do with my browser, since the history is unaffected, and because the situation <read> <Login expires> <compose> works fine.
I suspect only the vBulletin developers can do anything with this. I’d appreciate finding this out for the programs I’ve managed, since small bugs like this sometimes indicate an oversight that explains larger and more mysterious problems. As for me, I explained the workaround (hitting back until I get to the compose reply screen, then hitting submit) so this is a report for the purpose of quality improvement only.
I assume you have some mechanism for bug reporting, right?