Time Error and Log In Drop outs

[Impromptu]

Hi guys,

I have a website: www.supercoachscores.com which has been running really well.

However, in the past few weeks I have issues. My issues are as follows:

1. The time on vbulletin at the bottom of the page is sometimes wrong, ie sometimes it's correct and sometimes it's 15 minutes in the future. However, if it's 15 minutes in the future, I press F5 (ie refresh) a few times it changes the time
2. As a consequence of point 1, sometimes people are logged in at the correct time and sometimes at the incorrect time. Therefore, sometimes people are posting in the future.

I am not sure what's wrong and it's very frustrating. I have looked at the langage, time and timezone settings and it appears correct and I know that the time is different for those logged in and those not logged in.

Any ideas anyone?

Cheers Jay

[Lynne]

Do you have any caching on the server? Do you have an .htaccess file that does any caching? (default vbulletin has no default .htaccess file unless you use mod_rewrite urls)

Also, when this happens, login to your server and check the server time and verify it is not off. (If you don't know how to do this, ask your host.)

[Impromptu]

Hi Lynne (and everyone),

Just doing some research and this comment exactly explains my situation:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article is titled 'vBulletin bug with post time stamp or security token'

There seems to be a bug in the vBulletin forum software (currently at Version 4.0.3) that iTulip uses. Occasionally a new post to a thread gets the wrong time stamp, typically sometime years in the past, causing the post to be misplaced near the top of its thread as an old post. Often at about the same time, one gets an "invalid security token error" when trying to post, which can sometimes be cleared by refreshing the page and trying the post again. That can be annoying if it causes one to lose the text of ones post.

It seems that one can actually track down when such incorrectly time stamped messages have been posted by

1.doing an "Advanced Search",
2.click on "Search Single Content Type",
3.find posts "A Year Ago" and "Older",
4.sort results by "Last Posting Date", "In Ascending Order",
5.show results as "Posts",
6.and click on "Search Now".
Examine results (approximately) #34 through #49 of the search results. These will all be replies dated in the first few months of 2003. Those timestamps are more or less all certainly incorrect. In each of the cases that I examined, when looking at the thread containing one of these 16 posts dated 2003, the thread was rather obviously running in the last year or two (2008 through 2010.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That is if I press F5 it will work but then it will occasionally go to the wrong time and usually about 17 minutes in the future.

Thanks again Lynne, but I'm a newbie in the I.T sector

Cheers

Jay

[Lynne]

There is no bug in default vbulletin that will make the time stamps incorrect. Either your server is having issues, or you have a plugin/modification that is causing the issue.

[Impromptu]

Originally Posted by Lynne

There is no bug in default vbulletin that will make the time stamps incorrect. Either your server is having issues, or you have a plugin/modification that is causing the issue.

Thanks Lynne,

I removed the skin and it still doesn't work. Most of my changes have been on the skin via phrase and style template.

The only mods I have is Change Post Owner and Enabley Custom Css To be Used by Matt ( which I'm not sure what it was). The rest have been disabled.

*** Furthermore, users are being continually logged out when going through threads *** sigh

Cheers

Jay

[Lynne]

If you allow users to login to your site via both http://www.yoursite.com and just yoursite.com (which you do), then you MUST have your cookie domain (AdminCP > Settings > Options > Cookies and HTTP Header Options > Cookie Domain) set to ".yoursite.com" (no quotes, but note the period at the beginning) or your users will have problems. Also, make sure to tell your users to click the Remember Me button when they login.

Try disabling your other modifications and see if you still have the same problem.

Also, you never said anything about checking the actual time on the server when this happens.

[Impromptu]

Thanks Lynne

I did what you said about the cookie domain ie .supercoachscores.com

I then email my service provider and I get this response:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please create a script that tells you the current server time as explained
in this article http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_ref_date.asp and then run
this script when you notice incorrect time just to make sure.

After this you can then reply to this email and show the differences in
the time as well as the posts affected.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is giving me a headache

[Lynne]

Try something like:

- create a file called time.php
- enter:

PHP Code:

<?php
print strftime('%c');
?>

- upload to server
- point browser to script.

I *think* that should work.

[Impromptu]

Hi Lynne,

I tried all you advised and I 'think' it works. Not sure what I did, but for some reason it works. I think it's this suggestion

'If you allow users to login to your site via both http://www.yoursite.com and just yoursite.com (which you do), then you MUST have your cookie domain (AdminCP > Settings > Options > Cookies and HTTP Header Options > Cookie Domain) set to ".yoursite.com" (no quotes, but note the period at the beginning) or your users will have problems. Also, make sure to tell your users to click the Remember Me button when they login.'

Either way, thank you for your help and the time spent. Cheers, Jay