Losing posts when spending a long time writing

[Sarrate]

I don't write posts very quickly, preferring to take my time and reread / rewrite things several times. Not uncommonly, I would get logged out by the forum before I finalize my post. With the old forum software, when hitting Post or Preview, it would advance to a new page and say that I was logged out (or an error of some other sort), which I could recover my post from by hitting the back button, copy my post, relogin, reply again, paste, and continue.

 

Not so much with the new forum, it would seem. Since the forum appears to be using javascript more liberally for composing replies, if a user spends too long writing a reply without interacting with the forum and it logs them out, it sends them to a new page, but the back button is of no use. (Think of it like having an infinitely scrolling website, clicking a link on the page, then going back. You're now at the top of the page, not X screens down when you clicked the link.)

 

I wasn't timing it, but I probably lost over a half hour of time composing a post after hitting preview because I had been logged out in the background.

 

Is there any way to not lose a user's post in these circumstances?

 

 

Tangentially related, after testing, the forum doesn't even make it easy to copy a post to an external editor just in case, as the post composer doesn't insert bcc code into the editor, but insert it directly. (eg: Bolded text looks like bolded text instead of [ b ]bolded text[/ b ].) Raw bbc codes work if you manually type them in, at least.

[Some Random User]

I have also experienced this.

[Zepp]

When you log in there is a button that says "Stay logged in" which is unselected by default. Check that box and this can be avoided...

Even though I do not have this problem, I always do ctrl+a, ctrl+c before previewing/posting. I also do that about once a minute out of habit.

[GM Capocollo]

This is an issue with the way that the editor handles autosaving.  It'll hold onto your post if you, say, close the tab or accidentally click a link, but it naively assumes that when you click Submit, you don't need the cached post any more and deletes it, even if IPB rejects the submission because you're not logged in.  This has been reported as a bug to Invision but it doesn't look like there's a resolution yet.

 

The main workaround is to click "Stay logged in" if you think you're going to be doing some serious posting.  If you want to work in an external editor, use something that supports rich text like Microsoft Word or Pages or LibreOffice Writer; that'll preserve the formatting when you come back to the post editor.

 

Edited August 12, 2019 by GM Capocollo

[PaxArcana]

Formatting with (most) BBcode seems to also work - you can get bold text with [ b ] (no spaces obviously), and similar.  The forum parses it out, applies the correct formatting, and removes the tags themselves.  So, [ b ]bold text[ / b ] just comes out as bold text.

[Zaquria]

On 8/12/2019 at 4:49 AM, Sarrate said:

I don't write posts very quickly, preferring to take my time and reread / rewrite things several times. Not uncommonly, I would get logged out by the forum before I finalize my post. With the old forum software, when hitting Post or Preview, it would advance to a new page and say that I was logged out (or an error of some other sort), which I could recover my post from by hitting the back button, copy my post, relogin, reply again, paste, and continue.

 

Not so much with the new forum, it would seem. Since the forum appears to be using javascript more liberally for composing replies, if a user spends too long writing a reply without interacting with the forum and it logs them out, it sends them to a new page, but the back button is of no use. (Think of it like having an infinitely scrolling website, clicking a link on the page, then going back. You're now at the top of the page, not X screens down when you clicked the link.)

 

I wasn't timing it, but I probably lost over a half hour of time composing a post after hitting preview because I had been logged out in the background.

 

Is there any way to not lose a user's post in these circumstances?

 

 

Tangentially related, after testing, the forum doesn't even make it easy to copy a post to an external editor just in case, as the post composer doesn't insert bcc code into the editor, but insert it directly. (eg: Bolded text looks like bolded text instead of [ b ]bolded text[/ b ].) Raw bbc codes work if you manually type them in, at least.

This forum remembers what you had posted previously, just in case what you describe happens to you, and 99% of the time you will have your complete post sitting there when you go back to the editor.

 

If this happens to you again, do not click the back button or anything like that. Just go back to the topic where you were creating your post..... scroll down to the bottom of the page, click on the 'Reply to this Content' and the editor will open up, and your post should still be there. You will get a prompt to clear the editor, do not do this or you will lose your post and it will not be recoverable.

 

As to regards to you copying your post to another editor. You don't to use any special buttons to copy text, each OS has their own method (key combo's) of copying/pasting text to/fro the clip board. for example, in Windows, just click within the editor, press control-a, control-c, and then use control-v in another editor to past your content.

 

You do not need to use BBCode with this software (Most of the BBCode code was removed in Version 4 anyway). Just copy and paste from your external editor to the forum editor, you will be promoted to keep the formatting or not.

 

If you want to bold a word, select the word and click on the B icon at the top of the editor. Just treat this editor like you would most modern text editors - for example Microsoft Word.