Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Technical Help and How To's Log-in Problems

I've been having trouble logging in. Every time I visit the site, it says I'm not logged in, and when I try to log in, it takes me back to the forums without logging me in. I finally tried logging in without clicking the Remember Me box, and it let me in, but it doesn't always stay logged in while I'm on the site.

Has anyone else had issues with logging in? I tried clearing my browser, but the same problems keep happening.

OOh, a topic for me too. I log in successfully, but when I go to
get a story from the TOCs it logs me out instead of sending me to the story. Also my log in does not stay for more than one session.
hope someone can fix this
regards
Artemis

Yep, it's definitely more broken than it used to be till a couple of days ago.

Now, I not only get random logouts, my Windows Phone Internet Explorer isn't even remembering the username/password for the login page so I have to manually enter them.

And on my desktop, I was logged out, too, logged in, went back to this thread, was logged out again and it only worked on the second go-round. On the plus side, if this keeps up, at least I'll be able to debug it on a desktop browser

Michael

I had a similar issue and then it seemed to resolve itself. I have now currently been logged on for 2 hours without a logoff. Of course maybe I should not log out...

Mike

Yeah, it's more stable now. no idea about the mobile browser, though. Don't want to log out just for kicks

Michael

Okay, I'll take it back. It looks like I'm logged out/logged in depending on which page I'm on. For instance, I'm logged out on the main page but logged in when I visit a thread. The problem is, that I'm getting the same cookies for different paths (and with different values) and only one of those is actually valid.

e.g.
ubbt_mysess with path = "/" and "/ubb/"
ubbt_myid with path = "/" and "/ubb/ubbthreads.php/ubb/"

There's also several login and session cookies around and I have no idea if they're all valid/needed/contradictory.

I'm not familiar with the UBB forum software, so no idea which cookies are correct/duplicates/config-issues, etc, but it certainly feels like something's broken there.

Next thing I'll try is delete all cookies and start from scratch.

Michael

Okay, the problem is that sometimes we get linked or redirected to http://www.lcficmbs.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php/ubb/cfrm and sometimes it's http://www.lcficmbs.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=... Since the some of the cookies are created for the "/ubb/ubbthreads.php/" path, the login fails for the shorter URL. This is definitely a config-issue or a bug in the UBB software and there's nothing we user can do to solve this.

Oh, and sometimes it helps to switch browsers. Right now, I'm using Internet Explorer because Firefox wouldn't keep me away from the subdirectories.

Michael

Okay, it looks like I do not get path-cookies when I'm using Internet Explorer but several of the cookies I get twice.

Definitely not the way it should work.

Michael

I am going to suggest to anyone using Internet Explorer to access the boards to start looking into another browser. There are issues with IE and the boards that started with the switch over and that mostly because these boards are not built with IE in mind, especially older versions of IE. I know that Microsoft themselves are doing away with support of IE 9 and 10 very soon.

I highly suggest Chrome. Firefix seems to have some issues, too but they are not as bad as IE.

Please make sure that you enable cookies as that's how the boards work to keep you updated on which threads you've read and so on.

Also, clear your cache often. There's a program called CCLeaner that is free and will help keep your Internet cache cleaned. There are options to make sure that it does not delete your cookies, although, cleaning them up once in a while is not a bad idea.

Hope this helps some.

Support for IE9 and IE10 has already been killed for everything but Windows Vista (IE9) and Windows Server 2012 (IE10). IE11 is here to stay for the next decade or so. Right now, IE11 is working better than Firefox on the boards and there doesn't need to be an issue with which modern browser is being used with the boards. They don't use anything modern like latest generation HTML5 features.

Clearing the cache again won't help if things fail immediately after the login when you already started out with no cookies and a cleared cache.

I'm really crossing my fingers here for a fix on the server side, otherwise FoLCs will not be able to post as they used to and that would be bad for our community. Me, personally, I've been using Firefox for the past decade or more and I don't want to switch to Chrome or IE just to use the boards. OTOH, my Windows Phone uses IE and that one worked great till the upgrade and only logged me out occasionally since. It's only the past two days that things started to get crazy. You mentioned something about a server reboot and some related problems on the other thread?

I just tried to use a user agent switcher for Firefox but it didn't help, which is odd and apparently there is more to this than just the user agent header.

Is there something else we can do to help with supporting/fixing this situation?

Michael

Okay, i just disabled Javascript in ie ans it started to immediately fail there, too. Reactivating Javascript and resetting the cache and cookies didn't help. Chrome won't let me sign in either. Only IE on my phone still works.

This is bad.

Michael

Okay, I've just checked zoomway's boards and the use the same ubb version without problems. The cookies don't contain a path and the URLs always use the same format.

Michael

I'm going to try something. This is going to cause everyone to be logged out initially. Once you log back in let me know if you stay logged in.

Change is made, give it try now.

BTW this IS a KNOWN issue for all version of IE 8 and above. I have researched this just a little bit.

Okay, this solved it in Chrome but IE and FF are still broken

Hey guys ...

Yesterday I was having issues with posting. When I'd attempt to post, an error would pop up, mention a 'firewall' (I think), and stop the process. The day before, Monday, everything was totally normal.

Monday night my posting ability was back, and I was able to post a couple FDK's. Today I seem to be able to post, also.

But I do have one ongoing issue...

Both yesterday and today I've been having a problem with the log in. And it's pretty odd. Normally I stay logged on--and never logo out. I've had no issues with doing this over the last few years. And I always access the site through my iPhone or iPad (through Safari). Well, since yesterday morning, when accessing the site, I have to log on. Once I log on, I seem to stay logged on, until I click on the 'Lois & Clark Fanfic Message Boards' icon (on the top left of the screen) to 'get back' the the front of the site. Normally doing this takes me immediately back 'home', but now, doing this logs me out. If I use the back arrows to maneuver around, I stay logged in. Odder still, when I tap on the 'log in' button (after being booted out for hitting the 'L&C' top icon), I am suddenly logged on again. And keep in mind, this is without actually logging on again. Prior to yesterday morning, this has never happened.

Overall, no big deal. I'll be hear regardless--I'm just thankful to have 'posting' abilities again.

Just thought I'd throw this 'out there' while the conversation is being had...

Appreciate the work everyone does around here--it can not be stated enough. Love this place .
Laura

I had the exact same problem as Laura. Now I only stay logged if I have the "Keep me logged in" box unchecked. If I check it, I get logged out as soon as it boots me back to the main page.

Duh! Yes, that works. Perfectly obvious

MXY:

Michael, who now really should head off to bed...

I just emailed support about this and about upgrading the boards because this might be the only way to fix this issue.

Keep in mind that we will need to pay to access support, usually $60 yearly and if we need to upgrade over this, the last time the upgrade cost us $450 and 24 hours of down time. I just want people to realize that UBB support is not free and even though this is a known issue I'm at a loss at how to fix it other than going through UBB support.