A lot of differences. For one, this is hosted on their servers so no server issues on your end whereas flashchat can start getting server intensive with a few users on, from what I have heard.

I've experienced quite some serverload when using Flashchat (with about 10-15 people using it). Would this one be better?

I have to look on your site later today, but do users make mods for this product (like "who's chatting" blocks)?

Yes, as it is hosted on their server.

Also, the templates for this hack need to be cached.

Many (most?) Flash and AJAX chat applications use your web server for all incoming/outgoing chat messages. This requires constant polling, and places a lot of stress/load on your web server and database. These connections are not real-time socket connections.

AddonChat uses a real (stateful) chat server, and is hosted on our server farm. When a user connects, he/she has a direct socket connection to our chat servers which maintain state without constant polling of web servers and databases. It is much faster, and our chat rooms can easily accommodate hundreds of concurrent users.

Put simply, there is no additional server load on your system -- we host and manage everything. Our servers are built to handle any potential issue; they all have dual CPU's, redundant (RAID) drives, and we have standby systems for every server. We optimize our operating systems specifically for chat servers.

We've been doing this for many years now. Our clients range from single family's who use our chat room for occasional "get-togethers" to Fortune 500 clients, major news networks, and election campaigns.

Do you think all of the templates should be cached, or just the navbit that is displayed throughout the forum?

Here is what I did. I added this to the cache_templates hook:


That catches the popups and any others in use anywhere.

I like it. Thank you. I'll add it to the next minor update, though I think we'll limit it to just the addonchat_nav_link and the addonchat_who_bit -- these two will help speed up the system; the others though are only used when the addonchat.php script is called, or the addonchat_who.php script is called; so caching them throughout the entire site isn't necessary and may slow your site down.

We're still working with a couple people who have highly modified forums (most are using scripts that aren't taking advantage VB's product system, and require lots of manual code and/or template modifications) -- but never the less, we're seeing what we can do to help work-around some of these not-so-friendly mods :) I imagine we'll have another minor update out in a few weeks.

For everyone else reading who isn't a coder, don't worry about this now :)

Thank you again, Boofo!

Well, I would add them all as the Who's chatting will get used a lot and that isn't going to slow the site down at all just caching the three other ones.

Also, the 'Link Chat to Forum - User Profiles' and 'Link Chat to Forum - Find Posts By User' links give me an error page. I haven't checked the other ones yet. I am using the Pro PLUS now.

Can I show this part to forumhome?

I really like the feature that it was hosted to somebody else not my server.

Error in automatic lookup:
Account No: SC-308738