[UKBusinessLive]

You could use java chat as a live chat solution for support to customers. Or to offer live chat for pre-sales questions. Or simply a place for your regular members to hang out in and discuss your forums. Everybody uses it and it is easy to upgrade and configure.

Please note that i'm not in affiliation with pjirc, but we do think they're the best and easiest to use

So lets fire away...

Adding a Java chat section to your web site

Step 1. Get the java applet software.

This free software can be downloaded by everybody and installed on windows and linux based systems. So go ahead over to www.pjirc.com and download the latest version (binaries only).

Step 2. Unpack the downloaded software.

Unpacked the directory will have a few .html files and a bunch of other files. The first thing you want to do is rename the pjirc_2_x_bin/ directory to just simple: chat And secondly you can rename the file NormalApplet.html to index.html

Step 3. Configure the index.html file.

You will need to point the java applet to the right irc server and chat channel. You can use our chat network for free, and we run all the services and applications needed to get a proper chat experience. Our network is online 24/7 and has an 99% uptime. So open your index.html file with your favorite text editor and find this code:

<param name="nick" value="Anonymous">
<param name="alternatenick" value="Anon???">
<param name="name" value="Java User">
<param name="host" value="irc.diboo.net">
<param name="gui" value="pixx">
<param name="quitmessage" value="PJIRC forever!">

And replace that with this code:

<param name="nick" value="Guest???">
<param name="alternatenick" value="Anon???">
<param name="name" value="Java Chat User">
<param name="host" value="irc.Your-site.com">
<param name="port" value="6667">
<param name="command1" value="/join #chat">
<param name="gui" value="pixx">
<param name="quitmessage" value=" www.Your-site.com ">

Before you save the file please note that the command1 parameter is set to /join #chat - this value has to be replaced with your own channel name

And save the file.

Step 4. Uploading the chat directory.
Now that we have the files downloaded, unpacked, renamed and configured, it is time to upload the chat/ directory to your web server.

Open your FTP program and log in to your web account. Then go to the public_html/ or your htdocs/ or httpdocs/ directory (if you have any of these) and upload the chat/ directory to the web server.

Step 5. Test the chat applet.
Now you're basically done! One thing to do is to make sure you can load the applet and that it connects to our chat server and joins your chat channel. The chat can be called from the browser now by going to http://www.yoursite.com/chat (obviously replace yoursite.com with your own web site address.



A note to make: This is a java applet, which means it will pop up a security notification, asking you if you can trust this applet. Select yes or the trust button and give it some time to load. Once loaded you get a blue/white page with a chat window. On the right you can see your nickname in a column and on the left you can enter text and see the result in the channel. There are a few buttons in the bottom of the chat applet. One is the #channel name, and the other is the "Status" window. Make sure you've clicked on #channel first, to put the focus on the chat window.

Additional Information:

We take security and privacy very high, on our chat network we automatically MASK the hostnames. So nobody but the admins of the chat server can view the real host address you connect with. This gives you privacy and avoids that people can abuse your connection. For free we also offer fake virtual hostmasks.

Our chat network uses round robin dns, meaning if one of our chat servers is unreachable you will get connected to the next one randomly the next time you try to connect. Ensuring that our network is always online. We have multiple servers in one network and can hold up to 2500+ people at the same second, every second. With the ability to expand to tens of thousands of online users. We're looking forward to the members of your site being a part of our network!

A quick summery

* Get pjirc, download and unpack it.
* Configure it, rename a directory and a file, and edit the file to point to the irc server and auto join your chat channel.
* Upload pjirc and test it.

And when done, you can tell your users to come check it out!

Hope this helps

The original post by floris, can be found here http://www.vbulletin-chat.com/showthread.php?t=24433