Do Joomla sessions for guests expire at different periods of time than logged in users?

Question

I've been trying to track down some odd behaviour on a test site of mine and it appears to be due to guest sessions. I could be wrong, but it seems like Joomla sessions for guests are expiring at a faster rate than that set in the adminstrative section (Administrator->Global Configuration ->System->Session Settings.

Is this expected/ known behaviour? If it is, is there anyway I can change the session expiration time for guests to match logged in users?

I'm using

• Joomla Version: 3.9.11
• Session Handler: Database
• Shared Sessions: No

Answer 1

No, it is not expected behavior that sessions for guests expire faster than sessions for admins.

Front-end and back-end users all use the same Session Lifetime which you configure in Administrator > System > Global Configuration > [System] tab > Session Settings.

However, Joomla's default edit forms (e.g. Article Edit) have some code

JHtml::_('behavior.keepalive');

to keep a session alive after the Session Lifetime expires. Otherwise you might lose the changes in your article if you haven't saved it before the Session Lifetime expires.