This is long winded, but I'm hoping it will help people who are not able to stay logged in to the message board fix the problem. If you want to you can skip to the bottom for the "how-to-fix-it" piece.
The problem is that for one reason or another, the board isn't able to set a cookie properly on your computer. One thing that was affecting many people was the way I used frames. The main site and menu on the left reside on
www.arcadecontrols.com. The message board resides on
www.arcadecontrols.org. When you hit the menu on the .com site to get to the message board, it would load the .org based message board in a frame that resided on the .com site. Because we had one site loaded in the frame of another site, some browsers treated the cookie that the message board tried to set as a third party cookie and blocked it.
I've re-done things now so that hitting the message board link on the .com site loads an entire new page, with menus, frames and message boards all coming from the .org site. Hence, no more third party cookie problems. This, at least, is the theory.
--- How-to-fix-it ---
Make sure your computer is allowing cookies! Cookie blockers, firewalls, browser settings can all block cookies. Most of the time with these you can specifically allow cookies from a particular web site without altering your default settings for other sites. Be sure to allow cookies from
www.arcadecontrols.org and arcadecontrols.org ...
So, to fix the staying logged in problem if you're still having it, you should delete all cookies relating to
www.arcadecontrols.com and
www.arcadecontrols.org. Then load the BYOAC main page, and click the message board link. Log in to the message board, then try to navigate around the board. If all's working properly, you shouldn't have any more problems staying logged in.
Browser-specific info:
MOZILLA - Click the Edit menu, Preferences, Privacy & Security. Click Cookies, and make sure you're allowing cookies (either all cookies, or cookies for originating web site). Then click the Manage Stored Cookies button. Scroll through your stored cookies, and delete any arcadecontrols.org or
www.arcadecontrols.org cookies. Close out of that, then OK back to the browser. Revisit the web site and allow the cookie to be set if prompted (unless you've told it to ask you first it won't prompt).
INTERNET EXPLORER - Click Tools, Internet Options, Privacy. Make sure your slider is not set any higher than medium. If you want it higher than medium, you'll need to click the Edit button, enter
www.arcadecontrols.org and click the Allow button. Click OK, then apply. Next, click the General tab, and click "Delete Cookies" --- WARNING this will delete all cookies on your browser, and will have unknown affect on other web sites, including but not limited to making you log into them again. If someone knows another way to delete just the
www.arcadecontrols.org cookies that info would be appreciated. A cookie manager presumably would do so. After deleting the cookies (or just the
www.arcadecontrols.org cookies), close out of that, then OK back to the browser. Revisit the web site and allow the cookie to be set if prompted (unless you've told it to ask you first it won't prompt).
NETSCAPE 4.x - Edit menu, preferences, advanced. Make sure cookies are not being blocked. Beyond that I don't know how to wipe out cookies in Netscape 4.x other than using a 3rd party cookie manager. You are really doing yourself a disservice by still using Netscape 4.x -- it does a poor job of handling tables and is slowing down your browsing process, particularly on the message board. Consider upgrading to Netscape 6.x, IE, Opera, or Mozilla.
Netscape 6.x - Click the Edit menu, Preferences, Privacy & Security. Click Cookies, and make sure you're allowing cookies (either all cookies, or cookies for originating web site). Then click the View Stored Cookies button. Scroll through your stored cookies, and delete any arcadecontrols.org or
www.arcadecontrols.org cookies. Close out of that, then OK back to the browser. Revisit the web site and allow the cookie to be set if prompted (unless you've told it to ask you first it won't prompt).
Tom61's addon:
Opera - File, preferences. click privacy. Put a check next to 'Use cookies to trace password protected pages'. Hit apply then OK.
If you were having problems, did this work for you? Comments/feedback welcomed!
--- saint