October 11, 2003

Entry Saving Timeouts

One of the things that can be most irritating is spending a long time writing an enty, and then finding that your session has timed out when you go to save it – and then losing the entry.

Session timeouts are an essential part of OD security – I would like to live without them just as much as everybody else, but for the sake of safety we need them. However, to try to eliminate the problems associated with timing out when writing an entry, I’ve made two changes to the software.

First, I’ve put in place code that will check for a timeout when you are saving and then write your entry to a temporary space until you can log back in to the system. After you log back in, the entry should be saved properly. This is something that we had on the old OD software, but it was not working here. Now it is.

Second, I’ve changed the editing screen so that if you do have a problem and for some reason can’t save, you can hit your browser’s Back button and return to the editing screen with your entry still there. Before, if you hit the Back button, the editing screen would refresh and be blank. Now it will hold your entry if you come back to it. This will allow you to try to save again, or to copy and paste your entry somewhere else for saving later.

Hopefully, these two things will make typing long entries and saving them a little less bothersome.

The DiaryMaster

That 2nd one is an AWESOME idea. Thank you soooo much, dood.

FANTASTIC!

Great idea. Nice going! 🙂

YAY!! you rock. btw-you got a mention and a thank you in my latest entry **notewhoringcoughcough**

Why is the time-out function so important? I have my computer on all day, and it irritates me when I want to check my notes or favourites and have to log in again. I’m logging on far more often than I had to on Free Open Diary.

thanks dm.

These sound like excellent changes. Great! Maybe it would be possible to give authors the option of having session timeouts for security? For those of us who only write from our own personal computer, the security issue isn’t as great.

thank you thank you thank you! =) lovemisty

oh this is too wonderful that the entry will be held and not erased. THANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNK you!!

Hey, Just letting you know that the front page editor wont work. It’s got some sort of error. Thanks Jessica

Hey again, It says it’s an HTTP 500 Internal Error. Thanks Jess

thanks!

OH you are wonderfulllllllll! Grazie! I dont normally kiss strangers but, *SMOOOCH*

Cool.

I’ve just started a diary here, and everytime I go to change my diary title and diary description page I get the internet explorer error page. Every other link on the diary maintenance page works for me except the above mentioned. You have done an excellent job with this combining the two sites Well done.

hi, i’m a new user on the OD site… i just set up my account yesterday, and i’ve noticed that my diary will only let me accept notes from users on the site, and i’ve gone to my diary maintenance many times, and it clearly showed that i wanted to recieve all notes… any way you could help me? miss.kitt.e.

diarymaster, i’d like to report a weird entry-saving problem. everytime, there’s a mix of fonts used, (for eg, i used Times New Roman + Verdana) it accounts for more character-usage and it uses up all the 7500-character limit when i had only used about 4500 characters exactly… can you pls check or reply with an explaination? much thanks

YOU ROCK!

Hi, I actually use TOD ((with this same name)), and recently I haven’t been able to save any of my entries that are longer than a few words, it’s now gotten to the point that I can’t save at all. I e-mailed the problem e-mail address, but haven’t gotten a response. What should I do? hugs~alli

cool. I also tend to type my entries in notepad and then transfer them to save that problem :).

it logged me out again while i was typing an entry and not only did it make me lose the entry, but it wouldnt let me go back so that i could copy it… it did the exact same thing that it always does. that has happened one time too many with an important entry.

LOL you read my mind – boy was I discouraged when I wrote a particularly brillant entry only to have it lost to Timeout. Thanks for the improvements!

hi i have two questions. firstly….on this diary username, it won’t let me change anything in my description. it will let me IN to the page, but wont let me save anything. On my new diary which I started yesterday, “le.green.faerie”, it won’t even let me INTO the ‘change your diary description’ page. so it currently has NO description. please help! thanks

Question, I cannot seem to submit an entry to Reader’s Choice. I get a page that tells me that I already have a submission there which I do not. What can I do about this?

*bows down* ur awesome!

Oh, I was about to complain about the saving problem, ok then thanks. Another thing. Since two sites are together I have no reason to keep the old one(with identical entries), but then I do want my notes to import to the plus one. Is there any way I can do that?

my friend just made a diary, and it can’t be found anywhere. what might have happened to it?

Yet again I was perusing thru Reader’s choice and came across an entry that said I didn’t have access. Please, DM, do these have to be on RC?? Do these entries have to be shown to people who don’t have access?? If it’s for faves only, why can I see it??

Thank you! That’s all I have to say… that’s one of the things that frustrated me the most… lol

I still have to use HTML when writing entries. Also, I don’t see how timing out is essential to OD security. If it’s essential for the site I can understand it…but if you think it is essential for us, I vastly agree. If it is important enough that I don’t want any chance of someone reading my diary, I can always log out. Timing out is a horrible idea unless the site needs it for some reason.

yay!

Hi there! I’ve got a new diary, only one day old. Just went to save an entry and got directed to the timeout page. Logged back in, and then got taken to the diary save page. It finished loading and was blank. Clicked reload, still nothing. Reloaded the OD home page (where I was still logged in) then went back to my diary–no entry saved. I selected write a new entry, (more)

pasted the entry, and saved with no problems. I’m using Mozilla 1.4A, if that helps any. Decided to note here instead of email since it was dealing with this particular problem. Other than that, looks fantastic around here–keep up the good work!

1,000 thanks! Best OD news I’ve heard yet!

Thanks! ChristSeeker

Thank God.

I lost a whole entry because of this crap. man im so mad! I WAS NOT AWARE OF THIS NEW DUMB IDEA. AHHHHHHH! >_< royally pissed of doesn't begin to describe my feelings right now.

Thank you!!!

THANK YOU SO MUCH! THIS HAS BEEN A HUGE PROBLEM FOR ME! I just wanted to make sure that at least one person said thanks!! 🙂

Sorry, but your “saved in a temporary spot” thing didn’t work. I’m so pissed right now. I should have known better than to trust the upgrade.

i just lost an entry because i timed out.

thank you! ahhh that helps SO much!