Confused about chat....

[Elgin Clock]

Ok; so I know no-one really use the chat feature but how come every time I click on it when I am already logged in to CD does it say something like.."you must be a registered member to use the chat feature, click here to register"??? Does anyone else have that problem?

[Brandon Martus]

what browser are you using?

[Joe Ross]

You have to have the setting in your options "Automatically login when you return to the site? (uses cookies)" set to yes.

The chat also doesn't work with Netscape 6, but you get a different result.

[Elgin Clock]

I'm using IE ver. 6.0.2600.0000CO

Also I do not use the auto login to the site as I am using a work computer and also a family computer.

Why should the auto login make a difference if I log in manually everytime I come to CD?? I'm still logging in aren't I?

[Jay Lundy]

When you choose not to use cookies, your username and password have to be sent from page to page some other way (I'm not exactly sure how, maybe it's that big long s variable that gets sent every time). The chat page must only take the cookies for logon (it doesn't get passed that s variable?), so you have to sign in if you don't have a cookie.

I did a test and without cookies, the s variable is set to a very long string of numbers and letters. With cookies, the s variable was set to nothing every time. I'm assuming vBulletin has a function that encrypts and decrypts the username and password, so Brandon should be able to pass the s variable to the chat so you don't have to keep logging in.

[Nate Smith]

From a little experimenting I did with some of the features of this board a while back, I figured out enough to know that the s variable is a session variable. What happens is when you first log in, a random session variable is generated(long enough to ensure that it's unique) and then that session variable is recorded, along with your user name and password. So, whenever the scripts see that session ID come back to them, they can look it up within the session database and match it to your user name. There may be a way to get the chat to read the session DB, but unfortunately, it's not quite as simple as just decoding the contents of the ID itself.