Browser session expired (timeout) - how to avoid on large forms

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I have an application (PHP) that my users use that has some large forms. Often, my users take some amount of time to fill out the forms, 1-2 hours for example. Yes, I know it would be great if the forms weren't so large, but often there is some amount of thinking and consideration that goes into entering information into the forms. My users are getting "browser session expired" or similar messages after some period of time (could be 1-2 hours), and it occurs when they click Save to save all of the information they have entered.

How can I avoid this problem?

These are things I have tried:
Asking my users to remember to save periodically (works MOST of the time - but not ALL).
Changing php.ini for session.bc_maxlifetime from 1440 to 10800 seconds.

Any other ideas? It seems like session garbage collection must be running independently of settings from php.ini and I have ANGRY users.

Chuck
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Arn
Hello Chuck, Thanks for the question about extending browser session times. The main problem here is that it does require a coding specific answer and we do not provide coding support. However, we do try to point you in a direction that will give you an answer, and I think I may have found one. Check out this post concerning How to change the session timeout in PHP. The author of the answer gives you really good information about how you should make the changes apply in your code. I hope this helps to answer your question, please let us know if you require any further assistance. Regards, Arnel C.