Voting on Polls and Cookies

[RobAC]

I have a new member that has been having a hard time logging into the forums and posting and voting on polls while staying logged in. I just spent 30 minutes on the phone with him and walked him through the entire registration/posting process again.

They are using Windows XP and IE. They are extremly computer illiterate and have the believe that cookies are able to capture every single bit of personal/private information about you off of your computer. So, in their account, I have played around with the settings:

Remember Username and Password
Browse Boards With Cookies

I finally have his account set to NO for both options and he was able to stay logged into the forums and freely post and reply to messages. However, as soon as he goes to vote on a poll, he is booted out of the forums and told that he need to log in.

I haven't been able to figure out why this is happening. All members are able to vote on polls and I have verified those settings in usergroups. I've also double checked all settings under the main admin options and everything appears to be working properly.

Can anyone come up with a reason why this guy can post, but as soon as he tries to vote on a poll, he gets knocked out?

I'm at my wits end here and like I said, I've already spent 30 minutes on the phone with him. I don't know how else to help him.

[Floris]

In order to not having to enter a user/pass each time, they have to accept the cookie.

[RobAC]

Originally posted by xiphoid
In order to not having to enter a user/pass each time, they have to accept the cookie.

Yeah, but that doesn't explain why he was able to edit his profile and start a new thread and reply without having to log in multiple times, but as soon as he went to vote on the poll, he got logged out.

[Steve Machol]

What ISP is he using?

[RobAC]

Originally posted by Steve Machol
What ISP is he using?

Good question. Because I manually started up his account through the admin cp after he was having problems with registering on his own, there is no IP address listed for his account.

[Steve Machol]

The reason I ask is because there are reports of problems with AOL because of their proxy servers changing IP frequently.

[RobAC]

Originally posted by Steve Machol
The reason I ask is because there are reports of problems with AOL because of their proxy servers changing IP frequently.

Hmmm....his email address isn't AOL.com. It's a private company, but I'm checking with him to find out how he connects to the web.

-Rob

[Steve Machol]

If he's at a private company then it may be the proxy server at that company is blocking cookies.

[mvigod]

Originally posted by Steve Machol
If he's at a private company then it may be the proxy server at that company is blocking cookies.

I have users that can post and stay logged in (although many get logged out too) but they there is a group who can post but not vote...is the voting routine pulling from the dbsession instead of the $session[sessionhash] or something?

[Steve Machol]

Originally posted by mvigod
I have users that can post and stay logged in (although many get logged out too) but they there is a group who can post but not vote...is the voting routine pulling from the dbsession instead of the $session[sessionhash] or something?

Sorry, I don't understand the question. I suggest you start a new thread with all the relevant info.

[mvigod]

Originally posted by Steve Machol
Sorry, I don't understand the question. I suggest you start a new thread with all the relevant info.

Sorry, it does pertain to this thread I think so let me try to explain it more clearly.

I have aol users who can login and post normally but when they try to vote it says they aren't registered or must log in (it think they aren't logged in when voting). I am guessing this is because some other mechanism is involved in carrying the session within a vote action as compared to a posting action. I recall there are "dbsessions" (database session) variables in vb. My question was whether the use of a different tracking mechanism is the cause for this inconsistent behaviour?

[Steve Machol]

Starting a new thread is recommended because we like to deal with one specific issue or problem per thread. And by 'relevant info' I mean the vB version you are running, whether you have any hacks installed, the browsers these members are using, etc.

There have been reports of AOL members having problems voting with some older versions of vB. Most of these problems have gone away with 2.2.9.