When a profile is submitted without a valid cookie, the submission is lost (no data saved in the database) and the site redirects to the front page of the website. This occurs on Joomla when:
- An HTML snippet is used (I'm working around this by embedding an iframe loading a standalone profile page, with CSS display:none to hide it)
- You load a profile, then delete the cookies for the site
- You load a profile, then wait a few hours before submitting it
We just had the 3rd condition trip up someone trying to fill out a form on our website. She loaded the page, let it sit overnight, and tried to submit the form 8 hours later. I don't know how to prevent this besides adding a note by the Save button to the effect of "If it has been more than an hour since you loaded this page, please reload it before saving the form". This seems really clunky, and will potentially lose the long answers users have entered into the form, if their browsers don't handle the reload well.
Is there a way to remove the dependence of the form submission on a cookie?
If not, is there a way to control what I assume is a cookie timeout, to reduce the incidence of the 3rd condition?
If not, is there a way to redirect the failed profile submission to an error page instructing the user to go back and try again? As it is, with no error given and the site redirecting to the front page of the website, the user has no idea anything went wrong and that their submission has been totally lost. This seems like a serious problem.