My website session expires earlier than what I expect. What is wrong here?

Article Number: 128 | Rating: 4.2/5 from 5 votes | Last Updated: Tue, May 15, 2012 at 10:06 PM

If you register any of our shared hosting plans, your account will be activated on a shared server. A shared server is a server that is used and shared among clients. This means that your websites will be located on the same server with several websites that belong to our other clients. The existence of the other websites/services on the server may indirectly impact your site's session.

Even though you have set the session to expire in, let's say, 60 minutes, your session can still terminate earlier than what you expect. This is why we do not recommend the use of session variables on a shared server. Instead, you are highly recommended to use Cookie. The way you program a cookie is very, very similar with session, except with cookie, you have to implement HttpCookie interface. Big online retail shop like Ebay never relies on session and they always use cookie to track the customer information.

If you dislike the idea of using Cookie, you have another alternative, i.e. by using ASP.NET Session State. For more information about using ASP.NET Session State, you can refer to:

- http://blogs.msdn.com/b/johan/archive/2006/11/20/sessionstate-performance.aspx
- http://forums.asp.net/t/1803857.aspx/1?Session+out+frequently+in+asp+net+
- http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972429.aspx