Hey Phoenix! This is Judi. I tried to create a new update to my old forum issue and typed a novel, but when I tried to submit it, it flaked (meaning I obviously don’t know how all this works - whoops!) Something about not valid sometihng and be sure you are registered user, etc. I honestly can’t remember – I did log back in after it happened and it let me, but I am baffled.
Anyway, I am guessing that when a topic is too old, it doesn’t allow more activity. Can you maybe clarify for me the guidelines on that – (sorry, I can’t seem to find it and to be honest pain and frustration are stopping me from spending more time looking right now).
I’m not sure exactly what may have happened but it sounds like while you were typing your post you may have been temporarily “disconnected” from the site which means that your login status or “session” expired which means that you would need to log in again before being able to post (your old session ID would not be valid any more). This can happen more often when you have taken a long time to type a post and when you click submit it can make the post “vanish” and you are taken to a login screen.
This can be a frustrating part of posting to forums and the “fix” is to develop the habit of always making sure that you highlight and copy any post before you click submit. This way … if it “disappears” because your session times out … then you can log in again and then just paste it into a new reply (right click in the new reply window and click paste). Normally sessions don’t time out when you are writing a reply but on occasion they can if you get temporarily disconnected while you are typing (or if you leave the post for a while and come back to it). I did the same thing a couple of days ago (in spite of knowing better) and lost a post that took me over 2 hours to write.
I certainly know how frustrating it can be to lose several hours of “work”!
Topics don’t have any time limits and you can always post a reply in any thread no matter how old it is.