vBulletin Manual - Cookies and HTTP Header Options

The vBulletin Options > vBulletin Options > Cookies and HTTP Header Options setting group allows you to control the cookie settings, gzip compression, HTTP headers and redirect messages options.

Session Timeout
This is the time in seconds that a user must remain inactive before any unread posts are marked read. This setting also controls how long a user will remain on Who's Online after their last activity.
Path to Save Cookies
The path to which the cookie is saved. If you run more than one forum on the same domain, it will be necessary to set this to the individual directories of the forums. Otherwise, just leave it as / .
Please note that your path should always end in a forward-slash; for example '/forums/', '/vbulletin/' etc.
Warning:
Entering an invalid setting can leave you unable to login to your forum. Only change this setting if you absolutely need to do so.
Cookie Domain
This option sets the domain on which the cookie is active. The most common reason to change this setting is that you have two different urls to your forum, i.e. example.com and forums.example.com. To allow users to stay logged into the forum if they visit via either url, you would set this to .example.com (note the domain begins with a dot.
Warning:
You most likely want to leave this setting blank as entering an invalid setting can leave you unable to login to your forum.
GZIP HTML Output
Selecting yes will enable vBulletin to GZIP compress the HTML output of pages, thus reducing bandwidth requirements. This will be only used on clients that support it, and are HTTP 1.1 compliant. There will be a small performance overhead.
Note:
This feature requires the ZLIB library.
If you are already using mod_gzip on your server, do not enable this option.
GZIP Compression Level
Set the level of GZIP compression that will take place on the output. 0=none; 9=max.

We strongly recommend that you use level 1 for optimum results.
Add Standard HTTP Headers
This option does not work with some combinations of web server, so is off by default. However, some IIS setups may need it turned on.

It will send the 200 OK HTTP headers if turned on.
Send Internet Explorer 7 Compatibility Header
This option sends an HTTP header that instructs Internet Explorer 8 to render pages as Internet Explorer 7 would do so, rather than enabling full standards-compliance mode, which may result in rendering problems for templates that have not been updated for IE8.
Add No-Cache HTTP Headers
Selecting yes will cause vBulletin to add no-cache HTTP headers. These are very effective, so adding them may cause server load to increase due to an increase in page requests.
Remove Redirection Message Pages
Enabling this option will remove the update pages that are displayed after a user makes a post, starts a search, etc. These pages provide assurance to the user that their information has been processed by the forum. Disabling these pages will save you bandwidth and may lessen the load of the forum on your server.
Note:
Some pages will still use the redirection page when cookies are involved to prevent some potential problems.

When you are done, click the [Save] button to apply the changes.

fury

20th Apr 2005, 11:03am

Timeout for Cookie option - this setting essentially changes the length that a vBulletin session stays alive, so if you change this setting, be aware that your Currently Active Users display will change accordingly. For example, if you change the timeout to 3 hours, users who have visited your board within the last 3 hours will be displayed in Currently Active Users areas (forum home page, who's online page, forum display page, and show thread page).