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.

[Dream]

seangworld, what browser are you using?

arco I'll do that.

edit: seangworld, I think you put the guests user group as chatbox moderator, I think guests can delete messages in your chatbox

[da420]

I have about 1/2 of the firefox 2.0 users are complaining about the chat box showing nothing but a blank chat box, no text entry all intermittently, and others are saying it's not refreshing, or submitting posts to it.

[Dream]

I read your chatbox, is it a style issue? Some users were saying it wasn't working just on the Blue style.

I tested here with firefox and it seems to be refreshing fine, on the green and blue styles.

If this keeps happening, ask them if they get any javascript errors.

edit: yes it isn't working in the Blue Fluid style, how strange O_o

edit: yes it doesn't work only in the Blue Wave Fluid style, on all others it seems to work

edit: do you have any custom javascript installed in the Blue Wave Fluid style? I'm getting a big error here when the chatbox is loaded (exception, when you get an exception it means it's a big error)

[seangworld]

Originally Posted by Dream

seangworld, what browser are you using?

arco I'll do that.

edit: seangworld, I think you put the guests user group as chatbox moderator, I think guests can delete messages in your chatbox

yes i did actually. and ya know what? it took care of the frickin lag i was having on my site. i was wondering wtf was going on!! hehe, didnt think it was the chatbox.

[Dream]

Whats your refresh interval set to? If you set it too low it could require more server resources.

And sorry man, I couldn't reproduce your array problem in any browser I have.

edit: seang redo your forum home top chatbox edit in the new instructions to fix the collapse image

[Sir_Yaro]

Hi Dream.
Is there any chance to make this hack work with 3.5.x?
That would be briliant cause existing 3.5 version is extremly far from perfection....

[Dream]

I don't have time to support two versions, sorry.

But I don't see why this version shouldn't work in 3.5, could you try for me? The only problem I would see is product file incompatibility.

[Sir_Yaro]

Originally Posted by Dream

I don't have time to support two versions, sorry.

But I don't see why this version shouldn't work in 3.5, could you try for me? The only problem I would see is product file incompatibility.

yup, product files are incompatible.

Database error in vBulletin 3.5.4:

Invalid SQL:

### INSERT QUERY GENERATED BY fetch_query_sql() ###
INSERT INTO plugin
	(`active`, `executionorder`, `title`, `hookname`, `phpcode`, `product`)
VALUES
	('1', '5', 'Chatbox - WOL Support', 'online_location_process', 'if($filename==\'chatbox.php\'){$userinfo[\'activity\'] = \'dream_chatbox\';}', 'chatbox_lite');

MySQL Error  : Unknown column 'executionorder' in 'field list'
Error Number : 1054
Date         : Thursday, May 10th 2007 @ 09:58:43 PM
Script       : http://xxx/forum/admincp/plugin.php
Referrer     : http://xxx/forum/admincp/plugin.php?do=productadd
IP Address   : 89.xxxxxxx
Username     : Sir_Yaro
Classname    : vB_Database

[Dream]

I'll look into making a product file compatible with 3.5.

[Dream]

Updated, version 1.7

- Added /me code. Users can use the /me code in front of messages to denote an action.

- When posting the posted message now appears right away, as opposed to having to wait for a refresh. This is faster and uses a little less resources.

- Added Chatbox height option. To use it, redo your forumhome template edit. If you like your Chatbox size you don't need to do it.

And here's a :lol: smilie for you to use with the /me code