Query @ SESSION

[ashukla]

How a way this site manage session (using PHP $SESSION variables or cookies). In the special case of browser crash or close browser without logout what you perform. Is any way is possible to manage session if the page is not loaded until the session expiration time.

In this site there are following Cookies variables;
bbsessionhash 3fa01e70cca4544709aca6321d95ae1f
bblastactivity 0
bblastvisit 1210832026

As I am guessing bblastvisit is a time of last page load and bbsessionhash is a Sessionid.
What is bblastactivity in this case.
Is Cookie session management is more secure than $SESSION Superglobals.

[wysota]

As far as I remember our vBulletin stores its sessions in the database, so one can have access to it at any time from the server side. Those three cookies you mention are related to autologin functionality and to inform the software which threads should be marked as new and to mark a user as active or inactive (or something like that).

$SESSION uses cookies as well - they are not two separate mechanisms, one uses the other.

[ashukla]

I have gotten answer some part of my query. But

In the special case of browser crash or close browser without logout what you people perform. Is any way is possible to manage session if the page is not loaded until the session expiration time.

[wysota]

What do you mean by "manage session"? Sessions are cleared when a page is requested - a script scans all the sessions and removes the ones that timed out. If you close the browser, the session on the server will not get destroyed immediately. Only the client side stored in cookies will. Next time the user visits the site, the old session will be invalidated because of a lack of cookies and a new one will be created. At least those are my assumptions in a general case, not vB specific.