What's the easiest way to stop WP from ever logging me out

Question

After a certain amount of time WP logs out all users and forces them to log back in again. For development environments on my local machine this is obnoxious and absolutely unnecessary.

Is there an API-driven way of disabling the auto-logout indefinitely? Ideally I'd like something I can add to wp-config.php along with other dev-setup-related settings.

A plugin would be overkill for me so I won't consider it an answer, but you might as well post it as an option.

Answer 1

By default, the "Remember Me" checkbox makes you get remembered for 14 days. This is filterable though.

This code will change that value:

add_filter( 'auth_cookie_expiration', 'keep_me_logged_in_for_1_year' );

function keep_me_logged_in_for_1_year( $expirein ) {
    return 31556926; // 1 year in seconds
}

Answer 2

This has more to do with how you're browser stores cookies. When you login it should be saving the cookie and WordPress reads it to see if you're authenticated (at least that's what my understanind it).

On all local dev installs my username is admin and my password is admin. I don't find 8 letters to really be a big deal but maybe I type faster?

Answer 3

Does this work, if you place it in wp-config.php?

function wp_validate_auth_cookie($cookie='',$scheme='') {
    return 1; // admin user id
}

Not thoroughly tested. It doesn't so much "never log me out" but rather "treat everyone as admin."