Forum Issue - I submitted a post that did not post

[Awen]

this is a very different message than that which i thought would be my first.

you have a major problem with this forum... people who are logged in are kicked off within too short a time... that would not be too much of a problem if...

i just wrote out a quite lengthy post and clicked on submit, i was then asked to LOGIN, at this point i thought do i risk it and press back button in internet explorer that would hopefully show the contents of my post... well i didnt because i have tried that on other forums and it showed a blank post box with my writings deleted or gave an internet explorer error... so i logged in instead (which on some forums allows you to see your writings (saved for you) and gives you another chance to submit it, i thought perhaps it would just post what i had written after i logged in... well that did not happen and i lost my post.

some forums have options that can stop this kind of thing from happening... is this one of them?

FYI i had forgot to enter anything into the subject line, not sure if that would have made any difference?

[Mist]

It's not a problem, it's a short session duration when you do nothing. We had some issues with database stability lately and we had to cut the load by as much as possible, some of these things will come back over the next few weeks, some won't. That's life.
Main advice - change the browser, Explorer does not remember data enterd into forms, Opera and Firefox do, so if you press back you can recover few minutes of work.
Adding the post topic is irrelevant, it's autogenerated when not present. And we will not install any such mod for the same reason we cut the seesion length in the first place.

[Awen]

thanks for replying.

ok it may not be a problem, as you seem to expect and know this will happen, but it is annoying (im not alone in thinking that). as i said a lot of forums have a way around this happening. luckily the forums i visit nowadays all have ways to stop you losing the post info (except this one of course).

you talk of a mod that could be installed, although i dont know enough about it, i would question whether any performance hit would happen if it were installed (on the basis that all that needs to be done is remembering some post information... but i will take your word for it that there is a performance hit.

ive tried using other web browsers... i actually have firefox installed but i do not use it as my main browser (i use IE to store my favourites)... although Firefox lets you port your IE favourites into itself this only seems to work when Firefox is newly installed... and i cant be bothered to remove and reinstall firefox every time i want my favourites ported over to it...

and i dont use Firefox as my main browser because i find that it is not up to the task... one forum i visit a lot will not display the PM facility correctly that leaves you unable to create or even view your PM's (the needed info being displayed well off screen, to the left not right.. changing my resolution wont solve it). many other sites do not display properly or fail to disply things they should or parts of the site dont work, videos wont work etc.. i know that firefox does not have activex functionality but does have its own type of activex... im not sure if that contributed to my difficulties... perhaps my firewall interfered with firefox, but these sites work fine on IE.

until firefox gets it right i will be stuck with IE.

when windows done an auto update and IE advanced from ver 6 to 7 my firewall (zonealarm) tells me that IE wants to monitor user activities like keystrokes etc on my pc.. i said no (which stops all suspicious activities from that program, there is no lesser option) and now i get IE error pages and have to try again to access a webpage, also some things like linked files dont work.. wont load things like adobe acrobat reader... so i use firefox for the websites that IE can no longer handle... i even posted a msg to microsoft, i found somewhere i could, but nowone replied to me to say why IE was monitoring activities and why IE7 needs to but IE6 did not... im sure any response would have been interesting... i guess theres not a security threat attached to this as others on the web would have explored this and said something.. wouldn't they?... i still wonder if there would be a way of exploiting this part of IE that monitors user activities by outside forces... and i still dont know how far or short that goes.. it could be something like remembering letters/words typed into the address bar.. but ie6 did not need to.. if it was to do with the introduction of tabbed browsing, well i have that turned off. i have autocomplete turned off so data enterred into forms is not rememberred... dont know if turning that on would stop the problem im having here about losing post info... but in real life i wont be turning autocomplete on in case a hacker/virus/spyware (and ive had enough of them) takes my debit card info..

anyway i understand that nothing will be done and so will copy my message before pressing submit.. hope that i remember to.. well i did this time and i needed to.

i see what you mean about having nothing slow down the server and forum, my message took a long time to actually post.

i wonder... what is the "Save" button to the right of Preview and Submit, in between Cancel... it only appears on newly created posts that have not been submitted. does not matter anyhow.

[Mist]

Save button - if you start a post, and can't finish it at the ime for some reason you can save it as "draft" for future submission. It will not be posted, but instead moved to your control panel to finish and resubmit later.

[nataS]

until firefox gets it right i will be stuck with IE.

I too suggest you switch to firefox, if you happen to frequently visit website(s) that are designed for Internet Explorer only, you can install IE Tab. You can then open websites in Firefox using the Internet Explorer rendering engine, and even make a list of websites where this should happen automatically. Personally I never even have to use it, because everything seems to work perfectly with the Gecko rendering engine.

If you still want to continue using Internet Explorer, just write longer posts in a text editor and copy them from there.

[sam_waz_here]

With the amount of irritation this has caused me I would appreciate some kind of warning about the short duration period somewhere on these forums. Perhaps some kind of message telling you to ctrl+c your post before posting in case you are about to lose your information.

[AI]

Rather than pressing back, press F5, which will re-submit your post. Or just switch to a browser that remembers what you typed (firefox and many others)