the chat box

i like the ability to communicate in real time with other members.
as Barry mentioned in the thread that introduced the chat box, we westoners live all around the world.

one issue i have noticed is that after about 10 minutes of inactivity you get booted out. if you get booted out waiting for someone else to show up, then it looks like nobody is hanging out. nobody will sign in if there is nobody to chat with.

so my suggestion for the chat box is to change something in the programming to eliminate that obstacle. allow a user to stay logged in for, say an hour or 24hrs, or until the user leaves the forum website. 10 minutes is just too short.

Thanks for taking the time to comment Mike.

You're not alone in your frustration in being disconnected after 10 minutes of inactivity. Many other forum clients have complained as well.

This is a program parameter set by Forumotion, the site host. As with other Forum features I have limited access to configuration changes. In this case, zero.

The reason is to reduce demand on resources, since a live connection must be maintained to their database for each signed in user, not just on our forum but for all forums they host.

If there is no activity from your acct the assumption is that you've gone away and forgotten to sign out. So they do it for you!

If your washroom break lasts longer than 10 min, you'll have to sign in again to resume. I know it's not the best Chat facility but it does work.

thanks for the explanation