FAQ: How do I increase the time between logins?

FAQ Category: General

Version: AbleCommerce 7.x Asp.Net

Last Update: 3/04/08

 

DETAILS

FAQ: How do I increase the time between logins?

The time between each login is also referred to as a session.  At some point, a session must expire and thereby force the merchant to login for security reasons.  AbleCommerce provides a way for you to easily change the amount of time before a session will expire.

 

Sessions

  • A new session begins when you successfully login to AbleCommerce.  

  • As long as you are accessing AbleCommerce pages within the specified time period, the session will remain active.  

  • A session ends when there is no activity for the designated time period.  At that time, if the user tries to re-access the merchant administration, he or she will be forced to login before a new session can begin.

 

To Change your Session Time-out:

The end of a session is determined by the values set in the <forms timeout> within your web.config file.  The default value for timeout is 90 minutes. The  timeout indicates how long the user is logged in for.  Once you log in, you should not have to log in again until at least 90 minutes from your last activity.

  1. Find and open the web.config file.  It is located in the root folder of your AbleCommerce installation.

  2. Scroll down until you find the section of code that looks like this:

<authentication mode="Forms">

      <forms timeout="90" slidingExpiration="true" name="AC7.ASPXAUTH" />

</authentication>

  1. The default value is 90 minutes.  Increase this value to whatever you like.

  2. Save your file.

  3. If you want the changes to take effect immediately, then restart the IIS web service.

 

Session State

The session state is not really related to the session timeout.  When a user is active, ASP.NET creates a session to go along with it.  This determines how long the session is held in memory.  AbleCommerce does not use session extensively, so a lower timeout here is acceptable, typically 10 or 20 minutes.  Setting it high will only consume additional server memory and it’s holding data that is not important.

<sessionState mode="InProc" timeout="10" cookieName="AC7.SESSIONID" />