I did some searching, and it seems others had a similar problem but no solutions/fixes were posted, just something in Dec 2011 for release 3.1.4 that said “we’re working on it” - Also the error some people were having seemed a little different in nature (surrounding forum login forms).
I have a login form on my home page which after login returns to the forum. Whenever this form is used, the user is logged in as invisible, whereas using the forum login form they are logged in as per their preference. The forum template is currently the default ‘Default’.
My EE is v2.5.2 - Build Date: 20120606
Forum is v 3.1.8 (20120507)
My home page login form looks like this (stripped out some layout code)
{exp:member:login_form return="forum"}
<fieldset>
<label for="username" class="field-username">Username:</label>
<input type="text" class="textbox" id="username" name="username" value="" />
<label for="password" class="field-password">Password:</label>
<input type="password" class="textbox" id="password" name="password" value="" />
</fieldset>
<input type="image" src="images/go.png" class="submit" value="{lang:login}" />
{if auto_login}
<fieldset class="rememberme">
<input type="checkbox" class="checkbox" name="auto_login" value="1" checked="checked" />
<label class="field-remember">Remember Me?</label>
</fieldset>
{/if}
{/exp:member:login_form}Thanks!