I wasn’t suggesting changing to Chrome, but rather trying it temporarily as a testing / diagnostic step.

Mostly use chrome, login seems to last around the same amount of time.

When you get logged out, what wordpress cookies can you see? (ctrl-shift-i for the dev tools on a PC, I imagine a Mac would be something similar).

To me I imagine it comes down to the amount of effort, and possible cost, of moving the codebase from the current hacky wordpress forum.

It’s a interesting question, tho, is it worth the risk to upgrade the forums? Will the time and money spent making the move be rewarded? Will there be an increase in subs when people can use a quote button? It’s a gamble, where the status quo can seem attractive.

I don’t expect you’re far wrong. If I were a betting man, I’d say that some folk would like it, some would hate it, and net revenue wouldn’t change in any significant manner.

There will always be rants if you change. STW survived a short period of being offline, and starting from scratch. But then it did have paid subs etc.
The other forum which I used that went offline for a week, also starting afresh, never properly recovered, then a friend of mine bought it and it recovered a bit, then he sold it to someone that tried to monetise forums. Still didn’t recover, and when that monetising guy got out of the business and sold everything the company acquiring forums struck that one out of the contract and told him to keep it. Now it makes STW look devoid of ads, probably has more ads per page than users per day.
Changing forum s/w completely will purge, imho, 80% of the non-regular, non-subscription userbase.

back on topic, Will play with my Android Chrome tonight. STW logs me out, but then so does every other forum. But Facebook doesn’t, even when migrating between wifi and data.

Not noticed STW asking for location, but have certainly noticed a few other places asking recently. I just hit the get lost button.

Perhaps STATO – but looking at PF or Simple Machines – the software is feckall.
It gives every option people have asked for or none – it’s 5mins in the admin panel to switch it on/off. For feckall.
You can have Admin, Mods, etc of various levels all done in minutes.
Jesus – even PistonHeads which is the most boring forum ever to look at because of the “big hitters” moaning about change has avatars, etc.
It doesn’t however log you out, have rogue ads, etc.

imho Avatars are pointless frippery and the same goes for signatures that sit at the bottom of posts, pic hosting would be handy as i sometimes reply to threads asking for specific info on parts/mech how to etc and it’s a hassle to upload pics to my flickr account that i don’t really want in there

Are they “that” different to some of the “titles” certain members have been given on here?
Seeing as you can already upload a pic to your profile page – whats the difference?
PM’s are probably the biggest thing this place needs. Especially with a Sales section – easy to sort out a transaction, traceable, etc. Feedback in the sales section too – like “BHP” on the bike forums.
You could start at 12″ and work your way to 29’er 😆

As said “annoying” features can be turned on and off so there’s really no point in debating them.

As for changing software over, provided you give people notice and archive the content (ie. it’s not a full on car crash like what happened on Descent-World) then there should be no problems, DW and SDH both migrated in the past and there wasn’t a blip because the owners paid for the proper migration package that didn’t even necessitiate archiving anything.