Envolve Chat Integration Module
 

About the Envolve Chat Plugin
This module will connect your vBulletin forum to Envolve chat. Envolve is a chat toolbar similar to Facebook's chat bar that allows your users to have group and one-on-one chats with each other while browsing your forums.

This mod requires an API key from Envolve in order to function. Visit http://www.envolve.com to get one. A free version is available that provides a full feature set for up to 25 concurrent users. Higher numbers of chatters require a paid account.

This mod integrates your forum's account system with Envolve so that when users are logged into your vBulletin site it also logs them into the chat. In addition, it integrates your profile pictures / avatars and profile information. With the 2.0 release of the mod, other users can now view your profile information and get a link to your profile simply by placing their mouse over your name.

The Envolve chat system is a rich solution for community chat. Some of its features include group chat (both public and private), one-on-one chat, the ability to pop chats out into their own windows, moderation controls (boot / block / ban / timed ban), chat message translation, resizable chat windows, chat sharing, and drag-and-drop chat invitations. As a hosted solution, all chat traffic is handled by Envolve's servers and will not place any additional load on your server.

Installation:
Detailed installation instructions can be found here:
https://www.envolve.com/docs/vbulletin-chat-plugin.html. They are also provided in the Readme.txt file.
You can see and try out the chat at http://www.envolve.com.

This version of the mod will work for both vBulletin 4.x and vBulletin 3.8.x.

Screenshots:
Here the "People List" can be seen open in the lower right hand corner of the page. This shows all users who are currently viewing the forum. This site owner has chosen to only allow logged-in users to chat.
http://www.envolve.com/plugins/vBull...st-envolve.png

Here a public group chat has been opened, and the user has moused-over another user to see his profile information.
http://www.envolve.com/plugins/vBull...e-rollover.png

Here a user is creating a new group chat that will be shown to the other users on the site. He has also "popped-out" the "General" chat into its own window.
http://www.envolve.com/plugins/vBull...and-popout.png

7lanet - Thanks for giving it a shot! Do you have any feedback for me? Ways we can make it better?

Hosted would be better for site owners, not hosted elsewhere

Our hosted solution is intended to make the site owners' lives easier. Most web servers can't handle large numbers of real-time connections. We've built specialized real-time server software so that we can handle the load. This also makes installation and updates easier.

Hi,

Just a quick question : does it use the vbulletin login/passwd?

The free version allows login with Facebook / Twitter / Envolve. All our paid packages come with Single Sign On which securely logs your users into chat using their vBulletin usernames.

Installed and 5 stars!
Really nice customer service ;)
Thanks Andrew!

Happy to help! Happy chatting!

I understand, but ig there was a hosted solution I would gladly pay for it.

There are other chat bars out there which are hosted solutions. (Comet Chat for example) You may want to check those out as this one seems to only offer the one choice of hosting it on their server so far.