Why you worries that they are recorded? Chats are public and indexable by search robots. They should be recorded to be indexed.

You can download and save content on your side via JSON-RPC API, if you wish.

That presents a host of legal issues. Users do not expect their chats to be public. Nor are they granting permission in their accepting the terms of service and rules for their information to be hosted elsewhere.

There are no private user chats and data. It is site group chat. Content is public and indexable on your site.

I updated documentation with how to create your chat path.

I believe you're missing the point others are making... no other chat mod from what I know indexes "messages". No matter if chat for entire site, it's not actual content nor should it be (imho) and chat messages are typically considered private/personal.

I see what you wanted to achieve, a public chat for forum but until this has options to make private and not be indexed many may not choose to utilize it because many value privacy versus "public record" in my opinion. I recommend adding option to make entire site chat private for only forum members to see OR make it publicly indexed so owner can choose which they prefer - needs to be option in mod, not just robots.txt change because bad bots don't follow rules in robots.txt.

So, it's essentially a forum hosted elsewhere with none of the controls or safeguards?

Because on forums sites most administrators like their group chats to take place in the forums, where they can control who sees content, who creates content, who replies to content, which content is indexed, etc.

Not only does a public group chat which is indexed defeat or bypass all of those, it also removes the chief purpose of having forums: Discussion on the forums.

And then you add on that it's not even hosted locally which means even if someone wanted to use the product they wouldn't know where to begin amending their TOS.

"Yes, we have this new public group chat which makes everything you post in it public not only to our users but to the internet at large. It's also hosted elsewhere but we can't tell you where and we have absolutely no way of knowing how your data is being used. But agree to the following release and hold harmless because reasons!"

And we haven't even breached the subject of trolls or people looking to cause trouble by posting things they know will cause problems for a site if they become public.

So, how long does an administrator have to remove objectionable content before it is indexed?

I'm not trying to be a jerk but I have serious and legitimate concerns about using such a product and I would hope I'm not alone in that.

I'd also like to add that the fact chats can be indexed by search engines can lead to a whole host of SEO issues for communities - duplicate content warnings and the such - plus taking into account possible profanity/cussing and the kind, it can really damage a website's reputation and rating.

So this mod integrates user's profile (account)? Meaning is it a single login or do they have to create a whole new profile and account to start chatting?

Yes, this mod use your forum user profile account. No need to create any external account for user.

And you can enable/disable guests.

Interesting ...I might install this over the weekend ... I had one similar to this one called "envolve" and also BoWoB which both pretty much got discontinued ... I like the idea of it being hosted on your servers ... I will come back with my impressions after I install it