This forum occasionally forgets me - is it picking on me or just has amnesia?
 

This forum occasionally forgets me - is it picking on me or just has amnesia?

Seriously I know it isn't picking on me.

Most of the time I come here, it's just fine. I go to my subscribed threads and if someone has posted after me the type darkened and I can click on it and go to my first unread post.

Most of the time when I come here I can click New Posts and see what happened since the last visit.

But every once in a while I come here and the forum tells me there are no new posts (I know that's a lie) and when I click to see my subscribed threads none of them are in bold typeface and my name isn't the last poster's name.

Now indeed it's a minor problem and I'm not getting bent out of shape about it. Just curious as to why. If it's on my end, I can fix it.

I've tried deleting cookies, erasing history, and using a browser cleaner to erase all traces of the forum. This doesn't make the forum forget me, because time after time of trying this it remembers. Then all of a sudden it will forget.

I've tried using Chrome and Firefox browsers with the same results.

So why is the forum occasionally forgetting me?

Does it happen to anybody else?

Could it possible be on my end? If so, how can I fix that?

Like I said, I'm very curious as to why this happens. I frequent other Powered By: vBulletin forums that don't forget me.

And again, I'm not losing any sleep over it.

Bob

It's not you. I've noticed in the last week or so that pickin's are slimmer when hitting the New Posts button. I'm not losing any sleep over it, either. It is what it is. I figure I can catch up the next morning when I receive notifications of activity on threads I've participated in.

I think that's a browser cookie issue. I run a large forum about an old TV show. Information about threads since the last visit, etc. is saved in the member's browser cookie. Sometimes the cookies get erased or corrupted for a variety of reasons, usually unrelated to the forum. Or if a member logs in from a different computer and that browser's cookies do not know what the member did from another computer or browser.

That's what I originally thought. So I cleared the cookies, history, cache, and everything else, came back and the forum remembered me.

So the next day I tried a different browser, one that I rarely use anymore. Cleared the data off that one, and the forum remembered me.

I know the software that runs these boards must be extremely complicated. If it's happening to more than one of us, it means either it isn't on my end, or a few of us have the same problem with our computers.

If enough people chime in, the more that have this problem, the more it points to an error on the host's end.

Not that I'm going to bug them to fix it. It's only a minor inconvenience. But the curious person inside of me likes to troubleshoot a bit.

Bob

Bob, it doesn't bug us at all to try to fix it, and the more reports and details we get, the better. So far nothing stand out, but I'm keeping an eye on it to see what might be causing this.

Wa'il

Thanks. If it helps you, I'll repost the days that it forgets me.

So far it's been good since I last posted about the problem.

Bob