recover thread text

[dracenstein]

I just wrote a long new thread topic (and took a lot of time doing it) and lost it when I had to log back in (I was logged in when I started it).

It would be nice to have a recover text option to recover the text without writing it afresh.

I know such an option is possible (but don't know if it can be recovered if you have to log back in first) from the website A Forum of Ice and Fire, covering George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books and the Game of Thrones tv series.

I may rewrite my lost topic (on the subject of defining zombies from Haitian zombies to whether or not The Returned are zombies, IMO, definitely not), but prob won't.

[MinionZombie]

While I'm not in the know regarding any technical things that can do that, what I always do when writing a post (particularly a long one), is select all the text (CTRL+A) and copy it to the computer's 'clipboard' (CTRL+C) ... then if I ever lose it for some reason, when I go straight back to a text window I paste it in (CTRL+V) ... of course, you can only keep one thing at a time on your computer's 'clipboard', so if you copied an URL or something to include in your post, you'd have to do it all over again ... so yeah, not a perfect way, but it's a rudimentary way around losing a big chunk of text (I also like to paste the text into a Word or Text file and save it, just to be doubly-safe, when writing a huge post).

I know it can be very frustrating when you lose a long post.

[Andy]

I just wrote a long new thread topic (and took a lot of time doing it) and lost it when I had to log back in (I was logged in when I started it).

It would be nice to have a recover text option to recover the text without writing it afresh.

I know such an option is possible (but don't know if it can be recovered if you have to log back in first) from the website A Forum of Ice and Fire, covering George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books and the Game of Thrones tv series.

I may rewrite my lost topic (on the subject of defining zombies from Haitian zombies to whether or not The Returned are zombies, IMO, definitely not), but prob won't.

Could be a modification that that particular forum has setup but its certainly not something that done by the default software.

I will look into this next week for you when i get back online properly.

[Neil]

Only thing I'd be worried about it increased traffic/load... for the sake of the rare exception?

[krakenslayer]

Only thing I'd be worried about it increased traffic/load... for the sake of the rare exception?

Not that rare. This happens to me all the time, not just on here but on web forums in general. The longer you work on a post, the greater the chance of having to sign back in, and every time you have to sign back in it seems to be a game of chance as to whether or not you end up losing all your "work". This is particularly bad when using my phone (on which it takes me longer to compose a post and which has a higher chance of having connection problems) or when composing a particularly long and thought-out post (exactly the worst possible time for this to happen). I have come across this feature on other sites and it truly is a godsend at times.

Beyond that, all I can suggest to Dracenstein is, if you use Firefox or Chrome, try the Lazarus Form Recovery plugin, which is amazingly useful (albeit not always 100% reliable).

[Andy]

Only thing I'd be worried about it increased traffic/load... for the sake of the rare exception?

The default login timeout is set to 15 minutes so in theory if someone spends longer than that writing a post the forum will think they are idle and log them out.

I suppose a fix could be to increase the timeout if you dont want an autorecovery tool?

[Neil]

I just wrote a long new thread topic (and took a lot of time doing it) and lost it when I had to log back in (I was logged in when I started it).

It would be nice to have a recover text option to recover the text without writing it afresh.

I know such an option is possible (but don't know if it can be recovered if you have to log back in first) from the website A Forum of Ice and Fire, covering George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books and the Game of Thrones tv series.

I may rewrite my lost topic (on the subject of defining zombies from Haitian zombies to whether or not The Returned are zombies, IMO, definitely not), but prob won't.

I'm slightly confused why you had to log back in? Have you got cookies disabled or set the forum not to remember your password?

[krakenslayer]

I'm slightly confused why you had to log back in? Have you got cookies disabled or set the forum not to remember your password?

Can't speak for Dracenstein, but I never set browsers to remember my password for anything. Don't want other people on the computer logging into my stuff, and I dread to think what would happen if my phone got nicked with it still logged into every forum, social networking and banking site.

[dracenstein]

Why I was taking so long, distracted by watching tv at same time.

Extending the default login time-out sounds good and simpler to do.

[Andy]

I'm slightly confused why you had to log back in? Have you got cookies disabled or set the forum not to remember your password?

Ive had it happen to me before and i have cookies enabled, i think its becuase the user spends so long on a single page that the forum marks them as idle and then when they try to post directly from there, the cookie dosnt activate for some reason, maybe becuase their submitting form data?

Of course thats just off the top of my head, i would need to look into it properly to give you the real answer.

[Neil]

Maybe up it to 20mins then as a first step?

EDIT: I've done this!

[Andy]

Thats me back on broadband now neil, are we happy with the extended logout time or do you want me to look for some kind of auto recover for text plugin?

[Neil]

Thats me back on broadband now neil, are we happy with the extended logout time or do you want me to look for some kind of auto recover for text plugin?

I'd say let's not make work for ourselves unless we really have to? Go and enjoy your seventy-five thousand million mega bits of download speed :)