Upgraded to 3.8.4 PL2, users are reporting cookie type issues

[jimjam]

Hi Kevin, Pre upgrade - members would arrive at the site and be auto logged in. (unless of course they logged out and cleared cookies) Now whenever they visit, even though they previously checked Remember me?, they are not being remembered. They have to enter a user name and password every single visit, which is a pain. It appears new members are not experiencing this just some of the original ones that were members before the upgrade. Someone on this thread thinks it might be something to do with our .htaccess

[Chuck Holton]

Kevin - same experience as JJ is having, with the added note that with some of our users, it will keep them logged in for a period of time; and then they'll be logged out.

BTW, most users having this problem on our site are running some flavor of IE.

[FamilyCorner]

I am hearing the complaints that people are not staying logged in as well.

Another problem that we are experiencing is that a user will log in and then they get the "cannot access this page" error. One of my head moderators is having this issue.

[rinnus]

Users on my forum have the same problems. Is it a solution to change - the Path to Save Cookies (suggested settings) - Cookie Domain (suggested settings) In admincp ?

[jimjam]

These problems are indicative of a cookie path problem, but because it does not affect everyone I doubt that this is the culprit. Something in the upgrade, is trashing the cookie session for some users!

[FamilyCorner]

I have an update to our situation. I noticed that the link from our website (we have a website AND forums, not just forums - that's how many of our members access the boards) to the forums did not include the www in the link url. I went to the forums (which contains the www) and copied the forum homepage link. I sent that link to one of the members having trouble posting. Once she clicked that link she was able to post just fine.

I also made an adjustment in the admin control panel:

Settings > Options > Cookies and HTTP Header Options > Cookie Domain

The default option says "blank" I changed that to reflect the url with the "." in front of it. In our case .oldfashionedliving.com

I'm not sure if this is a fix or not, but it definitely helped solve the problem for this one member. I will update here once I hear back from others.

[FamilyCorner]

I have an update to our situation. I noticed that the link from our website (we have a website AND forums, not just forums - that's how many of our members access the boards) to the forums did not include the www in the link url. I went to the forums (which contains the www) and copied the forum homepage link. I sent that link to one of the members having trouble posting. Once she clicked that link she was able to post just fine.

I also made an adjustment in the admin control panel:

Settings > Options > Cookies and HTTP Header Options > Cookie Domain

The default option says "blank" I changed that to reflect the url with the "." in front of it. In our case .oldfashionedliving.com

I'm not sure if this is a fix or not, but it definitely helped solve the problem for this one member. I will update here once I hear back from others.

This has worked for all three members that were having trouble. Those are the only ones that I heard from. There were others complaining of the forum not remembering them, but I think that was because they were coming in from our main page that did not contain the www in the url. I have corrected the links to our forum to contain the www and hopefully that will correct it for everyone.

[jpkitcat]

What is the algorithm for generating this new cookie salt?

We set vBulletin cookies through our own custom login code. This new salt breaks our generation of vBulletin cookies which previously relied on our customer number.

I'd appreciate some documentation on this or least a way to generate matching salt in our own code.

Thanks,
Jason

[Chuck Holton]

Not sure if this helps anyone....

But I noticed that the 'session timeout' setting in the Admin panel was set to 10 minutes (600 seconds). I set it to an hour (3600 seconds) and suddenly loads of people have stopped complaining and started giving me kudos.

[Cynthia]

Not sure if this helps anyone....

But I noticed that the 'session timeout' setting in the Admin panel was set to 10 minutes (600 seconds). I set it to an hour (3600 seconds) and suddenly loads of people have stopped complaining and started giving me kudos.

I set our session timeout to 48 hours and that has not helped our members.

[Doka]

Not sure if this helps anyone....

But I noticed that the 'session timeout' setting in the Admin panel was set to 10 minutes (600 seconds). I set it to an hour (3600 seconds) and suddenly loads of people have stopped complaining and started giving me kudos.

After you mentioned this, I also remembered that I increased the timeout tenfolds (from 900 to 9000). The logouts stopped and after a day with the increased timeout value- I reduced it to the previous setting of 900. The logouts never resumed.

[dumoulin]

The problem that I get is in the admin panel. The left panel work fine but every 2-3 clicks, I have to relogon on the right side. I did clear all my cookies and it worked fine for a few minutes and the problem was back. I use IE 8.

[Paul M]

Hi Kevin, Pre upgrade - members would arrive at the site and be auto logged in. (unless of course they logged out and cleared cookies) Now whenever they visit, even though they previously checked Remember me?, they are not being remembered. They have to enter a user name and password every single visit, which is a pain. It appears new members are not experiencing this just some of the original ones that were members before the upgrade. Someone on this thread thinks it might be something to do with our .htaccess

When they login again, are they ticking remember me again. By default it is not ticked (another stupid change the other year, but thats another story).

IE is prone to getting its cookies in a mess sometimes. Sometimes the only answer is to log out of everything and then delete them.

(In IE7, goto Internet Options, then Delete button, then Delete Cookies button).

[Giang]

Same thing and in addition, recent posts cache was lost! So everyone's complaining. I advised to reset the browser cache. My "Recent Posts" was now rebuilding until a minute ago when it cleared itself again! Anyone else have this problem?

What to do?

Asher

I have the same problem, lost all my latest threads with this patch. Anyone know how to solve this problem?

Thanks

[Zachery]

You should be able to force all old cookies to be invalidated and force new cookies. But it will log _everyione_ out. Open your config.php file and find the cookie prefix setting, change it from bb or whatever you have in there now to vb4 or something similiar and short. This should fix the cookie issues without having to ask everyone to clear their cookies.