Its not that weird, the forums are a separate domain they are on .net and the main site is either .com or .co.uk so they use separate databases i think. They could use the same databases, I think, but its tricky. One of the reasons the site was changed last year was to make it look like everything was all part of one site. But with the logging out issue, and of course the logging into two sites issue, it doesnt seem like one site at all, it still feels like two to me. Hence I like to say "can we get rid of this awful design/theme and go back to two sites please gov or actually go the whole hog and make it all one site

Perhaps Toby needs to change the forum cookie expiry time for longer?