The default DotNetNuke login logout timeout is 60 minutes. That may work for some, but if you are like me and want to update your website every time you have an idea, you will find it a pain to constantly login. I prefer to be automatically logged onto my websites so I can immediately get to work. For your visitors, this is also a major convenience.

DotNetNuke use the Asp.net membership provider. The timeout period is controlled by a couple of settings in the Asp.net web.config file. Here is what you can change to lengthen your timeout period.

Look for the section <authentication mode="forms">. On the forms name tag, change the timeout to say 600000 and add the slidingExpiration attribute set to true. The whole thing looks like this.

Be aware that this changes the timeout for all the portals under this installation of DotNetNuke, since their is only one web.config per installation.

<authentication mode="Forms">

<!-- *** Original way
<forms name=".DOTNETNUKE" protection="All" 
timeout="60" cookieless="UseCookies" />
-->

<forms name=".DOTNETNUKE" protection="All"
timeout="600000" cookieless="UseCookies" 
slidingExpiration="true" />

</authentication>

By Andrew Weitzen, Bronze Inc. (c) 2010

Bronze is the publisher of several online Internet journals including: InternetHandholding.com, DomainNames.gs, DotNetNuke.bz, Programmer.bz, Software.vg, WebHosting.vg