Question

My php.ini file is set to expire sessions within 24 hours. But my users complain after being logged out after just 20 minutes or so.

I use session_start at the beginning of every page. Could that be messing things up for me?
Or could there be anything else causing this?

Just realized I might be on a shared hosting. And it might have some group settings for garbage collection with sessions. Anyone know how to look into this or set mine to be more specific?

Thanks!

Answer 1

ini_set('session.gc_maxlifetime',28800);  #28800 - just an example time - set your own
ini_set('session.gc_probability',1);
ini_set('session.gc_divisor',1);
session_save_path('/path to your sessions folder');
ob_start();
session_start();

You do need to create a session folder first.
This works for sure on GoDaddy shared hosting.
On VPS you can use this or just update your php.ini file.