Automated logoffs...

[genebujold]

I spent THREE HOURS (this is the rant forum - I'm allowed to capitalize here...) researching (hey! good research takes time!) and typing a very nice, detailed expose' on the varying DTS/5.1/THX DVD audio formats out there, comparing them to DVD-Audio and SACD, while simultaneously providing a very detailed expose on the varying technologies surrounding the A/V world today.

Result?

NOTHING!!!

Why?

Because when I hit "Post," it cycled to the logon page, and my previous work was GONE. Clicking the backspace produced NOTHING. Double-clicking also produced NOTHING.

Hey, please lay off - it's the RANT forum...

How about letting the USER decide when to log out? At the very least, please provide a timely warning (you have five minutes remaining...) as this is the standard adopted at the vast majority of secure login sites around the world.

Automatically logging off an individual without any warning, however, is akin to slamming the door in the face of your guest who's in the middle of a conversation.

It's grossly impolite. And, as I mentioned earlier, it's entirely unnecessary (and unacceptable) given the technology that's currently available.

Speaking of technology, please upgrade from phpBB 2.0.1 (2002!) to phpBB 2.0.8a, released 28th Mar 2004.

Thank you.

phpBB2 is the successor to the highly popular phpBB opensource bulletin board system. Re-written from the ground up to be even more flexible, secure and feature packed than its predecesor. phpBB 2.0 features all that was good about phpBB 1.x; one-click install, multiple language packs, simple and intuitive user interfaces, support for BBCode and powerful administration features. It extends this offering complete customisation through a powerful template system, fulltext based searching, advanced permissions system, powerful modularised administration controls, multiple database support, new moderator functions and much more.

Link: http://www.phpbb.com/downloads.php

As they say in New Orleans, "done getcha some!"

Who knows? It may even...

1.iii. Changes since 2.0.5

Fixed various email issues

Fixed registration email bug with Administrator Confirmation used

Fixed mass emailer

Fixed long post time issue

For the complete list of this update's accomplishments, go here: phpBB2.0.8

[Bubba136]

What kinda "automatic log off"? My main choak with the system is how quickly it quits when I log off by mistake. I wish there was some way I could go back and un-do the log off and pick up where I was before I mistakenly hit the wrong button. The main catch to this is that I lose the icons showing me which threads were posted since my last log in.

[genebujold]

What kinda "automatic log off"?

My main choak with the system is how quickly it quits when I log off by mistake. I wish there was some way I could go back and un-do the log off and pick up where I was before I mistakenly hit the wrong button.

The main catch to this is that I lose the icons showing me which threads were posted since my last log in.

Hi, Bubba - thanks for the post.

I agree with you about the icon issue. Right now, all the board tracks is when you last logged off. It compares that date/time with the date/time each thread is updated and changes the icon to show which ones were updated after your last logoff.

So, if you login, then acccidently logoff, when you log back in it appears you've visited all the threads, even though you haven't. I get the same problem if I need to be away from the computer for more than a few minutes.

In order to truly indicate which threads you've seen and which ones you haven't, the board would have to track the data/time of every thread you visit. Some people wouldn't like it because of the privacy issue - I could care less about that, though. But tracking all that data would get large, fast.

It's very doable, however - Yahoo! does something similar with tracking which e-mail you've read, but that's only one bit per e-mail - Read? Unread?

Tracking thread usage by user would involve creating an addition to the board's user database that would add a unique thread identifier (already present in the thread database) along with a date and time last visited. Something like this: 447366261763 12/12/04 13:45

You could mitigate the size of the data file by deleting all entries more than 30 days old.

It wouldn't add much to the size of the website online: I estimate there are no more than 100 daily users (included mere lurkers) who view an average of 20 threads a day. Over 30 days that comes to data file size of around 849k, just under 1 MB.

Not much at all!

One problem might be the server's processing power, since instead of merely comparing the last logoff date/time with the thread's last post date and time to change the icon, it would have to do a lookup function, pulling each thread's unique number and looking up under each user's database to find the last visited date/time for that thread.

To be honest, however, unless you have several hundred simultaneous users, your average Pentium III server would be able to handle that and serving the pages without a problem.

And what was our alltime high for max users online any given time? 38?

No problem.