There are two possible reasons for what happened to you...
1) There is a session "Timeout" function built into this site and most sites that require you to log in. It is meant to be a security feature so that if you log in, walk away from your computer for awhile, someone else can't walk up and mess around with your account. The timeout was set to 40 minutes. Which means if you click the "Reply" or "Post New Thread" button, and take more than 40 minutes to enter the message before clicking "Preview" or "Post", your session will timeout and when you do finally click "Preview" or "Post" the site will either take you back to the Login page or if you have it set to automatically log you in, it will return you to the Messgage Entry page. In either case, it will have lost what you typed in. In response to this issue, I just increased the timeout to 90 minutes.
2) There occasionally is a problem with the site "restarting" which ends the session of anyone logged in which will have the same effect as #1 above. This was an issue the past few days but seems to have cleared up now. This also has occured in the past, but usually is not a problem.
That being said, here is what I do if I am typing a long response, like this one...
1) Type it in the Message Entry page, just like normal.
2) Before you click "Preview" or "Post", copy the entire text to the clipboard. (On a Windows PC, you can press CTRL-A to select all the text, then press CTRL-C to copy to the clipboard.)
3) Click "Preview" or "Post". If the message posts, then you're in the clear. If it didn't post correctly, you can just Paste it back into the message entry form. (CTRL-V on Windows PCs).
To be extra safe, you can Paste it to Notepad, Word or some other application after you Copy it in step 2.
Hopefully this is not a major issue for most of you, but if you are worried about losing an hour of typing, being cautious is a good idea.
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-Adam Wartell
NCM Lifetime Member #1222
Founder: C3 Vette Registry
C4 Vette Registry, C6 Vette Registry
My first Vette, now owned by JB79: