Twice this week I have been denied access to the forum until I formally logged in. Since I first logged on to the forum (long, long ago) I have always had access without needing to log in each time. Is it my computer or something going on with the forum?

The reason you didn't have to log on again is that a cookie was stored on your machine to "remember" who your were. If you somehow deleted the cookie from your machine, you would have to log in again.

rcook, a bit of a request... is there a chance to turn "store password" off (uncheck) by default? If you want to store it (at home) you then have to turn it on once in a lifetime, but if access the forum from outside (and someone else's computer) you won't accidently store it if you ever forget it. Currently you have to manually turn it off again & again & again whenever you log in from outside.

I understand your situation, but I think over 90% of the people use the cookies to remember their username/password. Remember, if you hit the "Logout" link on the side, it will expire the cookie for you, effectivly deleting it from your machine.

I do use them myself and I wasn't suggesting to remove the cookies... I was just talking about the default settings of the checkbox. Currently it is on, that means that someone who logs in for the very first time will store the cookie if he/she does nothing. I agree that this is convenient. But then you have to turn it off manually whenever you visit from outside - and this might be very often. If you simply set the default to "off" it would work like this: Someone who logs in for the first time will find the "store" option unchecked. You typically read things very carefully if you enter something new - so all you got to do is to click it once (in a lifetime) and then never again!! Even if you miss it, it will appear again the next time - and whenever you got sick of typing in your name/password - you only have to turn on the checkbox once. The crucial difference is: If it is turned off by default (like my suggestion), every member must click it at least once, but hardly ever again. If you forget about it, nothing dangerous can ever happen. If it is turned on by default (like now), some members never need to click it, but others have to click it many many times, and forgetting it just once on a single computer might become dangerous. Thinking about this, I believe "off" is the better alternative.

I understand your point and it will be taken into consideration.

Thank you very much... :-) Btw. I can tell you why I'm a bit picky on this... it did happen once to me. I've been in an internet cafe and stupidly hit the "submit" before unchecking. It was before you enabled the "log out" for the cookies (thanks a lot for this feature - it is great!). I suddenly saw that the "log out" was missing and realized that I accidently stored the cookie - so I tried to go into "profile" to un-do it... and then the server connection broke down...!!! And then I found out that I wasn't able to delete the cookies manually, because the internet cafe wisely protected all the system stuff... :-( In the end I had to ask some of the staff to delete it for me - otherwise I'd spent weeks in panic that someone auto-logs in as me and changes my password... :-)

Ooops - just re-read my stuff and it probably sounds very confusing... What I meant: In the past the "log out" was only visible when you didn't store the password. If you did store it, you had to go to the profile to uncheck it, submit, and then the "log out" appeared In the last couple of months, the "log out" is always available. On the negative side this means that you have to be even more careful - you can't see any longer if you stored it or not (unless you go to the profile).

I agree with Martin. I often log in from the office (my boss knows about it and had allowed it :) but don't want to leave my private passwords there. So I have to uncheck the "Remember password" button every time. Nothing really serious but annoying. - wal