Chat Modifications - Dream's Chatbox

This adds a simple Chatbox in your forum home page for your members to chat.

The Chatbox is like a thread, members leave small messages in it for others to see. Think of it as an off-topic thread that never ends. The Chatbox can also help keep chatting out of the threads.

This mod is light on the server, uses little server resources to work. The default refresh rate is set to 5 minutes. You can disable automatic refreshing entirely in the options.

What's the refresh rate? The chatbox updates the messages shown every given seconds, that's the refresh rate. It sends a request to the server asking for new messages every X seconds, that you choose in the options.

Warning: If you set your refresh rate to 10 seconds this mod stops being so server friendly. You can do it, but be sure your server can handle it.


Features:
- Ajax (no page refreshes)
- Pages
- Set refresh rate in seconds
- Hide Chatbox contents from certain user groups
- Set user groups that can't send messages but can view chatbox
- Moderator user groups that can delete messages
- Disable auto refresh for guests
- Prune messages by user ID, user name, days old or all
- Enable/disable smilies, bbcode and [ img ]
- Automatic URL parsing
- Users can delete their own messages
- Smilies popup with all smilies you can use in messages
- Who's Online Support
- Show message dates or not
- User names linked and colored with their user group colors
- Banned Users
- Hide refresh button
- /me code
- Optional message colors
- Bunch of options in the Admin Control Panel

Live Demos: (leave your live demo in this thread!)
http://www.fliz.ru/ (russian)
http://www.sustainabilityforum.com/forum
http://www.virtualorbit.com/
http://www.bowlandcentral.com/forum


VERSION HISTORY



This mod is now final. It has all the features I think a chatbox should have, so I won't be adding more features to it. Anyone has my permission to use this as a base for another mod. It will still be updated for bugs though.

[arco]

Originally Posted by BadgerDog

I use the chatbox on the "Forums" page only, so I guess I'm ok. It's been working fine and the latest addtions are great.

Yep, you're fine then.

[Dream]

Updated, version 1.3

Now when the Chatbox auto-refreshes, the message the user was typing isn't lost.

This is not perfect, because by the time the Chatbox refreshes it gets the message, and the user has time to type more stuff while the page is loading, so it may lose some letters.

[BadgerDog]

Installed v1.3 update... works fine.... :up:

BTW, my animated smiles work fine in the chatbox....

Regards,
Badger

[Fungsten]

This is when I try to upload the Product XML from the ACP.

Database error in vBulletin 3.6.5:
Invalid SQL:
CREATE TABLE chatbox (
`shoutid` INT( 10 ) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT ,
`userid` INT( 10 ) NOT NULL ,
`username` VARCHAR( 100 ) NOT NULL ,
`shout` VARCHAR( 255 ) NOT NULL ,
`dateline` INT( 10 ) NOT NULL ,
`ipaddress` VARCHAR( 16 ) DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL ,
PRIMARY KEY ( `shoutid` )
);;

Never had that before.

[Dream]

That shouldn't be happening, and I don't know why it's happening to you.

Anyway, use the attached product file. It's the version 1.3 product file with the code to create the database table removed.

[Fungsten]

It worked.

Originally Posted by Dream

That shouldn't be happening, and I don't know why it's happening to you.

Anyway, use the attached product file. It's the version 1.3 product file with the code to create the database table removed.

On Edit:

Where the chatbox should be I get a "404 Error". Question, in the code it says:

<tbody>
<tr>
<td class="thead" colspan="2">
<a style="float:$stylevar[right]" href="#top" onclick="return toggle_collapse('forumhome_stats')"><img id="collapseimg_forumhome_stats" src="$stylevar[imgdir_button]/collapse_thead$vbcollapse[collapseimg_forumhome_stats].gif" alt="" border="0" /></a>
<phrase 1="$vboptions[bbtitle]">$vbphrase[x_statistics]</phrase>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>

When editing the Forumhome temp there is this:

<!-- end logged-in users -->
</if>

just above the portion of the template you want to edit.

[Dream]

Did you upload chatbox.php to your forum main folder?

You need to find that <tbody></tbody> code and add the Chatbox code right before it.

[Fungsten]

to the forum. Now it works! Thanks!!

Originally Posted by Dream

Did you upload chatbox.php to your forum main folder?

You need to find that <tbody></tbody> code and add the Chatbox code right before it.

On Edit:

I logged into my test forum with a regular account and though I have in the settings not to show to that group the Chatbox area says something like "chatbox can't be viewed". IS that the way it is? Thanks.

[Dream]

Yes, thats only so that group can't view the contents. If you want to hide the entire chatbox you need to do some template coding, but I wouldn't know the exact code to tell you.

[Fungsten]

I think I might, possibly, could know a way to do that.

Originally Posted by Dream

Yes, thats only so that group can't view the contents. If you want to hide the entire chatbox you need to do some template coding, but I wouldn't know the exact code to tell you.