New WordPress Plugin to configure user timeouts
I published my second plugin for WordPress today. It lets you configure how long user sessions and the “remember me” cookie last. By default they’re only 2 days and 2 weeks, respectively.
Twofold impetus: a problem with the internal P2 microblog at work when people like me left their browsers open for long periods, and the fact that I access too many WordPress blogs from too many different computers for the 2 week “Remember Me” timeout to be convenient enough. Cranking it up to 22 years!
The WordPress documentation is pretty great BTW.
And it was a little bit interesting to run in to the Year 2038 problem with 32-bit int timestamps. I don’t know, it was fun working around the ”infinity” ceiling:
Is there a way to set this so that the cookies expire when the browser is closed. It makes my families nervous that if they come back to the site the password protected information is visible because they’ve have previously logged in and the cookie has yet to expire. My explanation of this doesn’t satisfy them and I’d like to just have it require your login for each browser session. Thanks for your help.
-Mick
Mick, it sounds like you’re talking about password-protected private posts, and I’m not sure they have the same login cookie.
I think the main WordPress login cookie normally expires when the browser is closed unless the “Remember me” box is checked. But if you’re worried about someone using your browser cookies, you should use features like Chrome’s Incognito, or Firefox or Safari’s Private Browsing modes. When you close those browsers they will delete any cookies you used while they’re open.