Is there a way to simulate "activity" to keep a WebDirect session active beyond the time limit specified in the admin console?
You'd have to do that from the context of the session, so it has to be client side, and less than the time out window. What action would be safe to perform? You might have macro that opened a menu and then closed it to simulate a user doing that.
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Hello @titanpricer , welcome to Thesoup !
It used to be possible to edit the webd.conf file, but this is no longer possible.
As @Malcolm suggests, you’d need to do it either within the session or use a reverse proxy using something like Apache to keep the session alive within the session or proxy persistence. Of course this would be unsupported and we’ve never tried it.
Agreed about doing something on the client side.
I've been wondering if there's any potential for having a (small) webviewer on the layout which uses JavaScript to do the task.
My first stab at it would probably be using window.setInterval to trigger a very simple FMP script via FileMaker.PerformScriptWithOption.
If that didn't work, a greater hack would be to load an html file into the webviewer that would also use window.setInterval to trigger an action, but instead of using the more standard/robust FileMaker.PerformScriptWithOption, it would query the DOM to find a known button element, and simulate a click on the button. The button would need to be hooked up to a trivial script that runs, but does nothing consequential. In order to make this work, the html file loaded into the webviewer would need to be hosted from the same server as WebDirect, so as to not cause a cross-origin violation.
Both methods would require editing any layout that needed to be kept alive. The second one, is obviously much more of a hack-like approach. I have used that hack in the past just for fun, but not in an actual production environment. The trickiest part is probably writing the selector/code that will find the button within the DOM, because the page code in WebDirect is not straight-forward to parse.
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Understatement of the year. 
WebDirect has the worst case of Div-itis I've ever seen.
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Hi @titanpricer
You can do this by editing the wpe.prefs file in your FileMaker Server configuration.
The location of this file on windows and mac is:
FileMaker Server / Web Publishing / publishing-engine / conf / wpe.prefs
The line you want to add/edit is:
server/parameters/config/iwp-session-timeout=46800000
The session timeout is in milliseconds. So above 46,800,000 is 780 minutes (13 hrs).
Have been using this for a few years on a client solution without issues.
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Thanks, Planteg! I'm glad to be here. I am new to this. I have a WebDirect solution that is approaching its 10th anniversary. I'm happy to have this resource.
Hello, weekbicks. We are going to give this a try. We started using FileMaker 10 years ago and have since upgraded to WebDirect. Our solution has gained popularity, and I currently have several clients utilizing it. However, the back button functionality presents a significant issue. My clients utilize this solution to create comprehensive pricing bundles for the home services market, encompassing plumbing, heating, and electrical services. As a result, lengthy sessions are quite common. During these sessions, the weaknesses of WebDirect become apparent. I would love to implement a standard web interface on the front end while leveraging data from FileMaker. However, I am concerned that this task will be lengthy and challenging due to the extensive schema we have developed. Do you have any thoughts regarding this?
Hey Maclom, thank you for your response. It seems there are too many constraints, specifically, div-its in WebDirect. I am not familiar with that, so I looked it up.
"excessive or improper use of the <div> tag in HTML. It's essentially the overuse of a generic container (<div>) when a more semantically appropriate HTML element is available.
Does not sound promising,
If you look at the source code of any WebDirect page you'll see the "excessive" use of DIVs.
Suggest to your clients that that save the webDirect URL as a home screen app. Doing that removes the web browser toolbars, so it gives a bit more room to the app. More importantly, it reduces the chance of refreshing the page (which forces a re-login) when users swipe up/down. It really is a big improvement.