Chat box

[hopless3]

How about a chat box - so when several of us are on we can chat directly to each other.

[sbando]

This is more complicated, must wait for Noproblemo and Frigo's input.

[Frigo]

I have not seen anything like that with phpBB so far

[sbando]

Yeah, an external jave chat, do they still exist?

I'm so desperate that I'm saying this in public:

What about the eurobabeforum domain, a dedicated server for the forum, etc. Who do I have to shoot to see that happen?

[paroxysmia]

There is a ton of chat plugin for phpBB, vBulletin templates, MySpace and many websites etc...

Check these programs:

1/ Very simple shoutbox: Cbox with free & premium model (price not expensive but allows avatars).

2/ More powerfull chat: Chatango is a free chat for MySpace, eBay etc...

3/ Rich chat: AJAX Chat is an open source project.

AJAX Chat is a free and fully customizable open source web chat software implemented in JavaScript, PHP and MySQL. Sound support is implemented using Flash, Socket support using Flash on client-side and Ruby on server-side.

AJAX Chat integrates nicely with phpBB, MyBB, PunBB, SMF, vBulletin and other PHP community software.

Each chat has demo, try it ! For AJAX Chat, you can try admin:admin to test admin pannel too.

[hopless3]

I just thought of it because yesterday when myself and Laura were efectively chating by typing replys to the same thread.

It just occured to me that a chat box at the top of the page would allow us to have quick chats like that without clutering up the BBS.

I dout it needs to be too complicated ie no need to post pics vids etc just a chat possibly allowing private chats but that seems like a luxuary item at the moment

[paroxysmia]

AJAX Chat allows private rooms, ignoring users, post images, smilies etc...

[sbando]

Yes, BUT YOU NEED SOME LAZY ASS PROGRAMMER TO DO IT!!

You think it's easy to have some work done on the Internet??? The Forum is not even up to date, hasn't been for 5 months. There's people pretending hefty payments for lousy jobs they haven't even done. AND I CAN'T HAVE A NICE ARROW IN THE SEARCH BOX TO REPLACE THE ONE I DID 10 YEARS AGO!!!!

How many changes to EBI did you see in the past 6 years? And THAT cost me thousands of Euros.

[paroxysmia]

I dunno who own EBI and the forum but there is a ton of websites, forums and blogs on the Internet with nice templates, chats, forums, features etc.

And these guys pay a server too, like here. And surely with less visibility and help.

About the forum, this template is old and has been, phpBB has upgrated it. Why don't do it also ?

FluxBB, vBulletin, IPB: free and sharewares exist instead of phpBB (100$ per year for one license).

Bandwith has a cost I know but if LeaseWeb is too expensive there are another server providers in Europe with great service (eg OVH in France & Europe) with discount offers.

[hopless3]

Yes, BUT YOU NEED SOME LAZY ASS PROGRAMMER TO DO IT!!

You can programe "lazy Asses" - so thats why alll the girls say yes to anal eventually.

[sbando]

Paro, it just doesn't happen, it's not that I cannot afford it.
LW is extremely cheap, especially compared to the American hosts that were mandatory before Bush.

I'm even ready to have a dedicated server for the Forum and I'm still keeping the old eurobabeforum domain name just in case.

All it takes is that Noproblemo decides to work on it. External people we've met so far are totally unreliable, as we've further experienced lately. More on that later.

[Nihilist]

Just to give an overview of this from someone who develops PHP and creates websites. The bandwidth requirement of a chat room is generally far too high for a single server to cope with. A simple chat room is designed with no more than 30+ people in mind. If your going upwards of 100+ then your site will simply fall of the net.

You see, the way a chat server works (be it flash, or html refresh) is to hold the chat data in a text file somewhere on the server (or in the case of AJAX to store it in a temp database area). Now, consider that it retains a history of x amount of minutes. Each time someone types something it has to access this file (or database), read the last posted line, display that on the screen for that person.

Now this does not sound like a great task really for a webserver, but consider that this file could be upwards and exceeding a meg in size. Let alone that the server has to handle the forums, etc.

AJAX might work for a more robust and larger chat server but with the visitors amount of this site its highly unlikely that it would be able to cope. AJAX works asynchronously with the php being dormat while ajax javascript is running via the php's initially call thereby removing the need for refreshing and putting the strain on the SQL server rather than the PHP server.

To prove a point, find me a social networking site that has a public chat channel. There aint one because even sites like facebook do not have the technology to allow an open chat that everyone can join. Even google would crash if they tried this. So far there is no technology apart from client side chat programs (i.e. MSN, Yahoo, etc) that can handle a massive amount of chat traffic.

Steve

[laura]

a chat room on this forum would be the icing on the cake for me. Quite often i wanna chat about porn in general or even just banter with a few users. Currently outside of pms( which are great btw) there is no such place unless, and as hopless has noted you just clog up another thread!

[paroxysmia]

To prove a point, find me a social networking site that has a public chat channel. There aint one because even sites like facebook do not have the technology to allow an open chat that everyone can join. Even google would crash if they tried this. So far there is no technology apart from client side chat programs (i.e. MSN, Yahoo, etc) that can handle a massive amount of chat traffic.

Steve

It's blablabla....

Just look at the stats, the most ever user online on the board was 112. Do you think 100 users will chat together ? Clearly NOT !
Maybe just 10 or 20% in good days. Lots of users stay few minutes here, watch 2 or 3 threads and quit.

The last year I moderated a shoutbox Cbox on a website with 30k to 40k visitors per day and the chat worked perfectly.

And maybe you should remember the dead chat of Caramail, a very popular chat in 2000's. Internet was young and the chat had hundreds chaters without crashing.

The only thing to do is try a chat program and check the bandwith for the test.