Support

After a brief period of inactivity while working on a website, I am often locked out after returning to the admin area and attempting to access another area of the admin dashboard.

This is a bit frustrating as I am already logged in and yet I am blocked. How does this happen?

If you haven't already cleared your IP address, look at the Security Exceptions Log to see why your IP is being blocked.

One reason is Admin Query String. This is because when you pause, your session times out. You don't know that until you try to change screens, get thrown out and that triggers an error. But that's only one error, normally that won't lock you out. It could, depending on your auto-ban settings but "one strike and you're out" is pretty drastic. You can reduce this error by increasing the session time limit in Joomla! Global Settings.

Thank you for the quick response.

THe session timeout is set to 15 minutes. The inactivity I am experience is quite a bit less than that. Maybe 4-5 minutes.

I have screen shots to show the exceptions log and session time setting:

I assume the two Admin Query Strings are your IP. Your description really sounds like a session timeout. Please pay careful attention to how long your inactivity period really is. For me, it's always longer than I thought.

There are other things that will do this. Your browser is one. Those little pictures of sites you've visited recently - your browser can trigger a security exception when it sneaks back to take the screen shot. That depends on your security settings.

Sometimes your site will try to pull a resource from the back end for a front end page. Normally you see a 403 error, but that would show as this error in the log. Once again, that depends on your security settings.

The two errors are 12 seconds apart. That feels like a clue, but I can't think what it might mean.

OK I will try to monitor the inactivity a bit closer. In the interim I have increased the session time to 30 minutes. :) Thanks.