This thread starts as help for johanna but hopefully may one day do something for someone else - apart from making them run screaming into the shower. J has been reporting a problem staying logged in when she wants to be and (though I don't understand the problem with this) being logged in when she doesn't want to be.

J's using Firefox but it may help to know version and platform (Windows, Mac, Linux?). I'm using Firefox 30.0 on the the Mac (Mac OS X Mavericks 10.9.3).

BH cookies are stored under domain names bishop-hill.net and bishophill.squarespace.com. (Depending on one's design choices one can have more than one website per domain eg www.bishop-hill.net and secret.bishop-hill.net or more than one domain per website. Let's not go there in any detail.)

To remove BH cookies on my Firefox go to Preferences… under the Firefox menu, click the Privacy tab, then click 'remove individual cookies'. Scroll down to bishop-hill.net, select it and hit the 'Remove Cookies' button (not 'Remove All Cookies').

That's how I'd do it on my Mac. I'm expecting J may be on Windows so it may be a little different.

But why would one want to remove BH cookies? What's the different between bishop-hill.net and bishophill.squarespace.com? This thread is for those and other fascinating philosophical questions.

Glad you're through the main problems. On

the screen tells you that you are logged in when your login has expired

I assume you mean in the black box on the top right of the screen? This is probably 'static' so only tells you the situation at the moment you last downloaded (or refreshed) the page. I was surprised originally that your sessions (the time you are deemed to be logged in without interacting with the site) seemed to be so short. I don't think I've had a problem with that. But anyway your main problems are solved. There are always mysteries in such areas.

Hilary:

particularly if I haven't remembered to "Preview Post" for quite some time, which seems to keep the logged-in connection alive

Clicking on any link that refreshes or downloads a page from bishop-hill.net does that - it keeps your session (recorded in cookies) alive, meaning it keeps you logged in until another threshold (site-dependent - 20 minutes on BH?) of apparent inactivity is breached. But merely typing in an edit box doesn't count as activity (because it doesn't involve the server, just your browser), which is what creates the danger of loss of precious text. (We assume precious. We have to, it's a psychological need!)

Your solution is a good one. Here's another, perhaps less time-consuming one. When you've been editing for a while without clicking any other BH link, and are thinking of previewing or posting, right click on the name of the last poster (in my case Hilary Ostrov) and open their profile page in a new window or tab. If the top right of that page shows you're still logged in you're safe to proceed. (You now have another 20 minutes grace, or whatever the threshold is.) If not, copy your text to the clipboard, refresh the original page, paste the text and preview or post.

A good alternative as long as you remember to right-click rather than left-click on the person's name, which may cause loss of what you've typed so far.