Extending Customer Session Timeout

Hi all, I'm having a problem where if you add a product to the cart, it disappears after about 30 mins or an hour. I believe this has something to do with session length. I have tried the following in the php.ini but it has not made a difference:
session.gc_maxlifetime = 86400
session.cookie_lifetime = 86400
session.cache_expire = 86400

Can someone please help.

Thanks
Angel

Your hosting company can help you on that. If php.ini does nothing, only they can change that.

Ok, perhaps I should be a bit more clear. The settings in the php.ini do take meaning if I run phpinfo or echo the settings, they are configured correctly. So this is not a server setting issue. The settings have no effect on OpenCart 2.3. How can I get the changes to Opencart. I've done much research and see people asking the same question, but no resolution....

Thanks

Opencart uses those PHP settings to determine session and cookie lifetime. Again, your host doesnt let you change those values like that, dont trust what you see on phpinfo().

I really don't see how this has to do with the server and not the code. I've used several other cart systems in the past and they all had a setting in the application to set the session length. How could there not be something similar in opencart? Where is the default session length then? And why would it be 1440 30 minutes as I've read through all the posts?
Thanks

I also just noticed that if you add items to the cart and close the browser, everything is gone if you go back. This is horrible. Is it suppose to work like that? If so, How can I change it?

Found an extension that let's you set the cookie time and prevents the cart from clearing if the customer closes the browser. Sad that this is not a built in feature. Here it is if someone needs it PersistentCart