Integrating chat with forum, but still allow IRC access?
 

I have a chat room on my forum which can be entered via the web on a Java interface, but many of my members like the fact they can access the chat room via mIRC.

However I'd like a way to display on the front page how many and who exactly is chatting at the moment.

If I was to run the IRC client on my own server, is there a way I could get the information out of that to display on the front page?

You can use an "eggdrop" but I know nothing about that. You can also use the IRC Gateway of PHP (you must have that installed though) to generate the stats every XX minutes or on-the-fly.

firefly, you are correct, as usual. btw, to get an eggie running (the most reliable option), you need a shell. 7$/month.
just to let you know. :)

Egg drop, right!!

A shell, erm, you get shell access with all dedicated servers, surely!!

If anyones has managed to do this or anything similar I would love to hear from you!