Request for Remeber Me option

[dnys04173367569]

Is it possible for Webassist to set up on its own website login page an option for Remember Me.

Every time I want to log in to your website I have to find and retype my login information.

This would make it so much easier for regular visitors to the Webassist website, which I am one.

[Office Guy-172461]

Good idea, but in the meantime check out RoboForm. I've been using it for years and couldn't live without it.

[Anna Robinson]

Our site is scanned frequently to keep up with the latest security standards. The web team tells me that the standards prohibit us from using a remember me function on our site. There has been discussion about this in other threads on this forum and we realize it's cumbersome but are putting security first.

[neilo]

That's a shame.

Perhaps there is room for a small compromise? How about at least enabling auto-complete which is currently disabled (input autocomplete="off")? That would take away some of the annoyance!

Also, if one logs in to the forum and subsequently decides to visit his 'MyWebAssist User Profile (mywebassist/userprofile.php) he/she has to log in again - even if he/she is still logged in at the forum! Could the user session persist at least throughout the WebAssist site? I could recommend a good forum to help with this if required.

Cheers

[Anna Robinson]

The same restriction is put on us for auto-complete.

However, I'm not familiar with having to log in a second time across the forum and the regular site. This doesn't happen for me. So if I'm on the forum and I click the logo at upper left to go to the webassist.com home page, then I click "Your Account", I never log in again. What are the steps you take and at what point does it have you log in again?

[neilo]

Not quite sure what the circumstances are. Now I can close the browser, log in to the forum and go straight to my downloads folder. (!) Either I have been hallucinating, or the Downloads login times-out after a certain period. Oops.

[Office Guy-172461]

It's happened to me before but it's user error. Sometimes I open the main website in a separate browser window to look up something in the download area. When I'm done, I logout of that window and then realize I inadvertently also logged out of the forum as well. Not much you can do about that. :)

[neilo]

That could easily be what happened - I usually (if I'm in the forum and want to visit my account) right-click the WebAssist logo and select 'Open Link in New Tab'. To be honest I can't really remember the exact circumstances!

A good tip to put in your database would be this:

"If you want to get something to work, go on to a public forum and make a point of indignantly going on about how it doesn't work. Inevitably someone will patiently point out that, in fact, it does work."

Seems to work every time for me, sadly.

[John Langer]

At the risk of also ending up with egg on my face....

1. Can we have a separate login for the forums? I'm always coming back to the forums throughout the day and having to log in each time is a nuisance I must agree. Surely the security issues (that are to do with taking payments on line I believe) are not such an issue in the forums alone.

2. Another thing that "annoys" me is that the cookie that's used to say "You've already seen this post" doesn't get reset very often. I'm guessing on the times here but I'll login at sat 7 a.m. Read some posts etc and log out. Then three hours later log in again and see that a thread is indicating a new post. On inspection it isn't a new post at all. I then know that I have to inspect every post to see what's new and what isn't. I'm not saying get rid of the time lag altogether as sometimes (on other forums) I can close the browser inadvertently and on coming back in find that all the threads have been reset to "read" which is even more annoying. Hope I've explained that OK

[Office Guy-172461]

I think I would like to see Spam reduction put at the top of the list. It's pushing new posts into three pages when one would do. Could a limit be set on links? I don't think we need more than 3 in any post. It looks like they're getting around the minimum number of posts before the captcha removal.

[Anna Robinson]

1. Can we have a separate login for the forums? I'm always coming back to the forums throughout the day and having to log in each time is a nuisance I must agree. Surely the security issues (that are to do with taking payments on line I believe) are not such an issue in the forums alone.


John, That is probably correct (your commerce comment) but then you'd have to log in separately, which is what people tell us they don't want to to do. I guess there are pros and cons we have to live with in each scenario.

I'm looking into the other suggestions...

[neilo]

FWIW - I'd settle for John's suggestion re - separate logins so that the forum could have a 'remember me' or autocomplete=on.

[Office Guy-172461]

I just leave the forum running in a browser in the background (That's why I'm in invisible mode). Makes it real easy to check without having to login all the time. When I do need to login, RoboForm takes care of it with a single click.

[Anna Robinson]

2. Another thing that "annoys" me is that the cookie that's used to say "You've already seen this post" doesn't get reset very often. I'm guessing on the times here but I'll login at sat 7 a.m. Read some posts etc and log out. Then three hours later log in again and see that a thread is indicating a new post. On inspection it isn't a new post at all. I then know that I have to inspect every post to see what's new and what isn't. I'm not saying get rid of the time lag altogether as sometimes (on other forums) I can close the browser inadvertently and on coming back in find that all the threads have been reset to "read" which is even more annoying. Hope I've explained that OK

I've edited a setting that should correctly store and mark your read posts and forums. The only downfall is that this is more processor-intensive so we will have to keep an eye on performance. Feedback is welcome.

[Anna Robinson]

I think I would like to see Spam reduction put at the top of the list. It's pushing new posts into three pages when one would do. Could a limit be set on links? I don't think we need more than 3 in any post. It looks like they're getting around the minimum number of posts before the captcha removal.

I think I may have read the whole manual now and can't find any way to put a limitation on links. Great feature request for the vBulletin folks. Unfortunately, I think we'll just have to keep trolling for spam. We'll do our best to find it before you do.

[Office Guy-172461]

Reading the manual seems rather drastic. :)

I don't know anything about this but this article seems interesting:
Combating vBulletin Forum Post and PM Spam
http://bobschwarz.com/combatting-vbulletin-forum-post-and-pm-spam

BTW What happened to invisible mode?

[Office Guy-172461]

I've edited a setting that should correctly store and mark your read posts and forums.

My unread post are all messed up now. The new ones aren't showing up in the new post search and there are a bunch of post I've already read in there.

[neilo]

I've found that if I can bring myself to use IE, I can just swipe my figerprint on my laptop finger-print scanner (of course) and log in automatically. The software doesn't work in Mozilla, dammit. But I still can't bring myself to use IE . . .

[John Langer]

I just leave the forum running in a browser in the background (That's why I'm in invisible mode). Makes it real easy to check without having to login all the time. When I do need to login, RoboForm takes care of it with a single click.

Yeah, I use RoboForm (great little app) and have done for about 6 years now. Couldn't live without it. But it's not a single click, it's at least 3. Depending on which route you take into the site. But, in the scheme of things that's far easier than manually having to type in your log-in details so I'm not complaining. Just seems unnecessary to have to log-in to a forum and not have a "remember me" facility. I only log into the main site once in a blue moon but to get to the forums (and be logged in) I have to go via the log-in page on the main site. Because I use RoboForm, to have an extra log-in would not be a problem to me at all.

[Office Guy-172461]

With my version of RoboForm, I just hover over the WebAssist login tab, click "Fill & Submit" and I'm logged in with one click.

[Office Guy-172461]

Whatever change was made has completely broken the New Posts feature for me. I'm getting 12 pages of new posts instead of 2 or 3 and some new messages do show at all.

This has made it unusable for me.

I don't understand why the invisible feature was removed. I don't want people to think I'm ignoring them just because I didn't log off.

Hopefully these things can be fixed soon as it's too time consuming to find new post the way it is now.

Update: I just hit New Post again and now I have 20 pages going back to 10-18-09 and this post isn't there at all. Not good.

[neilo]

I thought it was just me - that I had inadvertently toggles a setting I didn't know existed. I can't understand the logic of the 'new posts' or 'today's posts' views any more. One reply to a thread I posted on didn't show up on either, even although it was a brand new post.

[Office Guy-172461]

It looks like no one else can find this post. I tried deleting the cookies and it made it worse. Looks like the forum will be broken until someone stumbles upon the Wish List.

Maybe it's just us, but I can't find a way to get it to work right and I don't want to manually go through each forum. Too bad. It was working so well before.

Good luck.

[Anna Robinson]

I'm reading all your posts and looking into it... please bear with me.

[Anna Robinson]

These are the 3 options I can choose from.

1) Inactivity/Cookie Based - once a user has been inactive for a certain amount of time, all threads and forums are considered read.
2) Database (no automatic forum marking) - this option uses the database to store thread and forum read times. This allows accurate read markers to be kept indefinitely. However, in order for a forum to be marked read when all threads are read, the user must view the list of threads for that forum. This option is more space and processor intensive than inactivity-based marking.
3) Database (automatic forum marking) - this option is the same as a previous option, but forums are automatically marked as read when the last new thread is read. This is the most usable option for end users, but most processor intensive.

It was originally set to 1 by default. Yesterday, I set it to 3. Setting it to 3 basically marks things unread because it needs to start from scratch marking times in the database, but that should give us the most accuracy moving forward because it wouldn't be affected by clearing cookies, etc. So we can either take the hit now and move forward accurately or we can change it back (though changing it back will mark all your posts read if you've cleared your cookies I believe).

It doesn't make a difference to me so I will wait for your feedback. I only changed this in the first place to try to accommodate your requests and make the settings more accurate.

I haven't changed anything with invisible mode but my guess is that automatically changed with this setting... I'll need to look into it.

[Anna Robinson]

Also, it looks like you can use Quick Links > Mark Forums Read to basically reset things as read and start from scratch that way. You would miss a few new ones today if you used the New Posts link; however, you could use Today's Posts to get caught up... then things *should* be accurate moving forward. If they are not, it could be a vBulletin bug, and like I said, we can go back to the old settings... it just sounded like that wasn't accurate either.

As far as invisible mode goes, can someone tell me the steps they used to use to set to invisible and what is missing now. My administrator account is different from yours and my test user account still lets me set myself to invisible in the User Control Panel. I can look into it further as soon as I have a better understanding. Thanks!

[Office Guy-172461]

I can no longer find the setting for invisible.

It switched to online whether I'm logged in in or not.

"New Posts" doesn't work.

"Today's Posts" works correctly sometimes.

Now it asks me to log in again to post even if I have and it shows that I'm logged in.

Forum doesn't work right with XP or Linux with cookies cleared.

Seems like a lot more was lost than gained. I don't understand what was wrong with the way it was, but I can't use it this way. It was hard enough maneuvering around all the Spam without having to do everything manually as well.

[Anna Robinson]

I've changed the setting back to be cookie based. If you've cleared your cookies, all threads and forums may look read, but it is exactly back to the way it used to be now.

Let me know if this solves your invisible setting too. This is the only setting that was changed in the last 24 hours and it doesn't make sense to me how that disappeared from your control panel... but if this solves it, then I suppose we are good to go again! :)

[neilo]

Hi Anna,

"The web team tells me that the standards prohibit us from using a remember me function on our site. The same restriction is put on us for auto-complete."

I was just wondering which standards your web team are referring to and who 'puts' those restrictions on you - even a PayPal account login allows auto-complete on the email login?

Just curious, not critical. Glad to see the forum back to the way it was - thanks for that!

[jm271908]

Every time I login to my account at webassist.com it always asks me to enter a new password. This is kinda bothering me. I have asked instant chat to look into the problem and they could not find an issue with my account and suggested posting in the forum.

Thanks

[Anna Robinson]

I was just wondering which standards your web team are referring to and who 'puts' those restrictions on you - even a PayPal account login allows auto-complete on the email login?


We use a certified third party to scan our website and make sure we are meeting the criteria to be compliant.

We are aware that you all are annoyed by having to log in every time. I do not believe the login functionality is going to be changed anytime soon, regardless of what other websites do, but thank you for your feedback. We will keep the request on the wishlist.

[Anna Robinson]

Every time I login to my account at webassist.com it always asks me to enter a new password. This is kinda bothering me. I have asked instant chat to look into the problem and they could not find an issue with my account and suggested posting in the forum.

Thanks

Please start a new thread for this issue with exact steps - the clicks you go through, the pages you're on, etc. I've never heard of this issue but tech support or the web team can look into it for you. Thanks.

[neilo]

Thanks Anna. My annoyance was very short-lived.