Opinions - Best Chat Intergration

[Steve Machol]

I'm interested in installing a chat hack that's integrated with my forums. I've looked at the various hacks available but I'm interested in knowing what you all think is the best overall chat hack. I do have my own server so I can install something onto the server if I need to.

So in your opinion, what is the best chat hack? Also how would you rate it on ease of installation and integration with vB?

Thanks!

[Logician]

ditto for my suggestion here (https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?postid=430930#post430930) :glasses:

[MaDCaT75]

I got my own personal chat hack :p

[kyrnel]

Are there any chat rooms that allow you to display the number (or specifically who) is in chat from a regular vB page?

[Natch]

I just installed vBXirc, and after a few template tweaks to fit my style it's a smooth install and a very smooth running java applet - none of the problems I've found before with the alltet's requiring very specific versions of the java plugin - this worked straight off the bat in Firefox ... tho it is only a chat applet - you would need an eggdrop to get the info of who is doing what back to the forum ...

[kyrnel]

I am actually trying to stick with a java client-server app that doesnt rely on an outside IRC server.
I know you can hack the way that a chat room integrates into your board making it like a forum. That way Whos Online displays who is in the chat room (at least until the timeout expires).
But I want to take this a step further and allow members to continue browsing while they chat.
So I am planning on giving them an option to display the chat room in a separate window or in a frame allowing them to continue browsing while still in chat.

This would require a plug-in specifically designed to work with the chat room in order for me to display who/how many members are currently chatting.

I know Real Chat does this, but I am trying to find a cheaper solution than $500 if possible.
I sent an email to Sigma Chat a week ago asking if their software supports this functionality but they never replied. I am assuming not since there is no mention of it anywhere.

Maybe I just need to bite the bullet and pay the $500 for Real Chat.

[Logician]

This would require a plug-in specifically designed to work with the chat room in order for me to display who/how many members are currently chatting.

Please note that such pluggins can sometimes be clumsy, especially when integrated with vbulletin pages (like who is online or forum home who is online). The script can be slow or can get the server busy when integrated into high traffic pages (eg. vb forum home). We did it for real chat's pluggin and put "who is in chat" into vb forum home but it slowed the server down so we removed it. FYI.

[kyrnel]

That is very good to know. Thank you.

I think it would be more benefitial to know the number of people in the chat room as it would to know the specific people in there.

Is there a system that allows this functionality without much overhead?

My board is pretty good size (20k member, 150-200 online peak) and although we are on a dedicated server I want to be careful of adding too much overhead to the site.

[Logician]

Is there a system that allows this functionality without much overhead?
As you know such systems should be searched in the chat product's page as they are pluggins to chat software. IIRC there was such a pluggin for realchat but I doubt it is server friendly.

My suggestion would be not directly plug it into vb home page, instead tie it to a cron job to run say every 1 minute to compile a static page. Then vb forum home page can inherit this static page. This is in theory as I didnt apply such a solution before but I believe it should solve the server issue problems and is applicable.

That pluggin was not very crucial to us so we solved the issue within vb by the method you mentioned above. It allows us display users as "in chat room" until their vb cookie expires and it does not need any pluggin.

[Natch]

Hey does anyone know of a system to tie a specific GameSpy chat room into a webpage ??

[kyrnel]

My suggestion would be not directly plug it into vb home page, instead tie it to a cron job to run say every 1 minute to compile a static page. Then vb forum home page can inherit this static page. This is in theory as I didnt apply such a solution before but I believe it should solve the server issue problems and is applicable.This is kind of what I had envisioned the plug-in would do. A company that builds a chat room and a plug-in to see who is chatting can't assume that the plug-in won't be queried multiple times by each user. I would have assumed that they would use the approach of writing the chat statistics to a static file on some timed basis to prevent overloading the server.
But I guess sometimes the direct (simple) approach is what is used without consideration for performance.

So basically, I would have to setup a separate page (probably PHP) that runs thier plug-in and writes the result to a text file. Then setup a cron job to access the page every minute (or whatever time period).
Then in index.php (forum home) I would add some code that extracts the value from the text file and displays the number of users in the chat room.

Would accessing a text file be less overhead than storing the value in the database?

I really appreciate the help you are giving. It seems that most chat rooms should include this functionality. I am pretty suprised that it is this difficult to determine which app to use and how to integrate it.

Thanks again.