title: Difference between idleTimeout and ShutdownTimeout
body: <p>I am trying to relax my website's session expiration policy so that the users may specify the session timeout interval.</p>
  
  <p>I need to figure out what website related settings should I specify in order not to limit the users too much. For example, one might want a 1 day interval. I will be using tickets to accomplish that.</p>
  
  <p>Now, I know I can specify the idleTimeout and shutdownTimeout in my website's web.config file (I prefer this method as it's damn easy to adjust it without the whole deployment hassle after).</p>
  
  <p>According to MS specs found here: <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.configuration.hostingenvironmentsection.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.web.configuration.hostingenvironmentsection.aspx</a> it seems I have to set both idleTimeout and shutdownTimeout values.</p>
  
  <p><strong>idleTimeout</strong> = Gets or sets the amount of time, in minutes, before unloading an inactive application.</p>
  
  <p><strong>shutdownTimeout</strong> = Gets or sets the amount of time, in seconds, to gracefully shut down the application.</p>
  
  <p>But I could not figure out what's the difference between them. Should I set them all to "Infinite" to give users complete control? Is it enough only to set idleTimeout? Or only shutdownTimeout?</p>
  
  <p>And most of all, will this really work for my desired scenario?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks.</p>