Automatic log out?

I was lurking around on RATS and clicked on my ATS to see if I had any replies that needing tending and I was totally logged out of ATS? Is that normal? I know that when I bounced to BTS I had to relog in, but when I came back to ATS it was fine. I didn't make sense that I would be logged out while on a board. Help?

If you are reading an extremely long or complex thread and spend too much time on that thread w/o going to another page within the ATS network you will time out. Its a basic feature of almost every forum on the face of the planet, even the craptastic home brew ones. One trick to avoid this would be to open a second tab with something like the most recent posts page, and just reload the page periodically to keep the session alive.

yeah, but it wasn't a excessive time on a single post that's the thing. i just wasn't sure bc a lot of times I forget to hit the log out when I'm done on ats and just shut down my internet explorer when I come back I'm still signed in, unless I delete my cookies. just never experienced it before.
ok thanks.

Hrm, I think I know what you are talking about now, chances are it might have just been the cookies expiring. I generally keep my browser signed in 24x7 but occasionally my session expires as well, so chances are its just some max age limitation that is reached.