DigiChat Integration V2.0

DigiChat Integration Version 2.0

This hack is no longer supported. I have released DigiChat Integration 3.0.3.

The new hack can be found HERE

This is my update for VBulletin 3.0.x. Sorry for the delay but it took me some time to upgrade to vb3.0.0 and integrate all other hacks + develop my new upgrade hack. :nervous:

What is this hack ?
This hack is a complete integration of the Chatsoftware DigiChat ( which is NOT freeware ) into the latest version of VBulletin 3.0.x. :devious:

What does this hack do ?
This hack provides the ability to offer a complete front-end to the DigiChat software. So if you are running your own DigiChat server or your chat is hosted somewhere else, this hack will provide you for each member a specific profile, settings and whos in chat functionality.

For Admins and Chatmasters i am providing an extra Admin/Chatmaster login depending on their userstatus in your forum and they will get the extra tool to trace IPs from chatusers. Normal users will just see the names of the users in chat and a link to their forum profile. :devious:

Are there many changes to be done ?
No, i try to keep my changes to a minimum and if it is possible not to touch any databases for obvious reasons. So this hack exists of:

- 8 new templates
- 2 template modifications
- 6 file uploads
- 1 php file modification

Do i need version 1.0 or version 1.1 for this hack ?
No. I am providing both. An upgrade path from previous versions and also a new install path for complete new installations.

How long does it take to install this hack ?
If you are familiar with VBulletin and DigiChat it will take about 10 minutes to upgrade and 15 minutes for a new install.

Is there any support for this hack ?
Yes, from me but i will change the way of giving support now. I my previous version i posted my email address and the amount of emails was amazing. The bad thing was that no one shared this information in the thread. Due to this i will ONLY give support to people in THIS thread and ONLY if they clicked on the "INSTALL" button. I am sorry, but my time is limited and answering the same question 5 times via email is not very efficient. I hope you understand this.

Are there screenshots available for this hack ?
Yes. I have included them into the zip file and i will add them in this thread.

How to manage this Chat environment ?
This version 2.0 has one config file which you have to edit before you go live. In the future updates i will add one table to the database which can be edited through the admin panel. This is not really important because the security will not change so often for chats but just in case someone wants to edit this configfile via the Admin CP i will offer this in the next version.

Whos in Chat function does not work ?
Please make sure that you have the appropriate rights and the commander function enabled which produces the output file every x minutes who is in chat. You have to have a license from DigiChat to be able to do that. :tired:

Some words are in german ?
This should not be the case. I developed this on my domain and in german. I translated all the frontend but you never know. If there are parts still in german please tell me so i can translate them.

So enjoy this hack and happy chatting. After installing please click on this install link or on the install button at the top.

UPDATE 2.0.1
I am very sorry, but i forgot to put one file into the zip file. The missing file is the chatlauncer.php for the javascript pop-up to log into the chats. So if you realized that you can only log into the chat with the extra option, then you know why. Again apologize for this. I have uploaded the new zip file and updated the install.html.

For those of you who installed it already just download the zip file and copy the chatlauncher.php into your forum root directory.

UPDATE 2.0.2
I added some bugfixing for the guest template and the chatlauncher.php. Thanks to Randomlove for pointing that out.

For those of you who installed it already just download the zip file and copy the chatlauncher.php into your forum root directory. After this open the template chat_start_guest and copy the text from the install.html file into your template.

Cheers,

[Xabbu]

Originally Posted by Cap'n Steve

Wow, Digichat is expensive. :ermm:

Cheaper to set up an IRC server and a free java chat client.... they obviously aren't marketing to the small forum ops...

[leitel]

Has anyone implimented AV 5 http://digi-net.com/technology/digichat/index.html ?
In particular, the Instant Messaging feature? Product also appears to provide for real time interaction between vB and digi-chat. So from FP, you can SEE flagged in some way who are logged into chat. AND have URL links to specific rooms.

[Pseudomizer]

Originally Posted by Xabbu

Cheaper to set up an IRC server and a free java chat client.... they obviously aren't marketing to the small forum ops...

You are right and i do not make advertising for them. I just want to help other admins to combine what they already have.

Cheers,

[Pseudomizer]

Originally Posted by leitel

Has anyone implimented AV 5 http://digi-net.com/technology/digichat/index.html ?
In particular, the Instant Messaging feature? Product also appears to provide for real time interaction between vB and digi-chat. So from FP, you can SEE flagged in some way who are logged into chat. AND have URL links to specific rooms.

Hi Leitel,

to be honest ? I will not pay for a messanger when you can download multiple messangers from the net for free which can deliver the same capeabilities like they do. The only advantage would be to see who is in chat but 90% of my users are using ICQ and my "Who is in Chat" page.

On the long term i will upgrade to 5.0 with Video/Sound but not to get the messanger. At the moment they only offer this in an enterprise version which is way out of pricing for low-end or midrange communities. They will offer this for sure in the next months for the midrange communities for a better price.

I upgraded to DigiChat 4.0 end of Q3 last year and now i upgrade VB to 3.0.0. The next step will be DigiChat 5.0 end of Q3 or Q4. And i will provide another update for my integration.

Cheers,

[leitel]

I would love to just use free IM utils. But users don't always expose their user names. I am trying to make it brainless to collaborate with other users of whom some are collaborators on content. When they come to the site, I want other users be to able to IM them. PM would be nice but they may have the page idle and will not know of the PM until they refresh.

Thanks for your hack and input. I will be getting into this soon.

[Pseudomizer]

Originally Posted by leitel

I would love to just use free IM utils. But users don't always expose their user names. I am trying to make it brainless to collaborate with other users of whom some are collaborators on content. When they come to the site, I want other users be to able to IM them. PM would be nice but they may have the page idle and will not know of the PM until they refresh.

Thanks for your hack and input. I will be getting into this soon.

No problem. But keep in mind that the real benefit will be to use this IM with DigiChat 5 AV Enterprise only. I don't know if you have seen the pricing yet but should give it a small look before you take the IM and then you have to buy version 5 to get all features.

Keep me updated what you will do. I would be more then happy to help out.

Cheers,

[leitel]

I have committed to Enterprise to gain not only the IM but the VOIP features. I would be happy to Skype with you regarding this since I believe you are in Germany. My handle is larryeitel.

[yeloc]

I installed the digichat hack and it worked perfectly on my test server. Nice job Pseudo. Now I have a question for everyone because I get a little confused when it comes to this. I run my website from my own server at home, so when I connected to my test server I would open my forum from 192.168.1.x. Then I would go to chat and Digichat would open just find without issue. The thing that I get confused about is when I install Digi to my real server. Do I put in my local ip of 192.168.1.x or the IP that the world gets to like "http://www.nottashouseofpancakes.com"? I know that seems stupid, but I'm confused by this. Also, I don't use the standard port of 80. I had to change my port to 8085. So when I install Digichat do I put in "http://www.nottashouseofpancakes.com:8085 as the host name"? If I'm reading correctly I think this program doesn't work to well with non standard ports and if it does you have to add a special piece of software which is a tad overwhelming. To work around this could I install the Digichat part to another machine and run that on port 80? I know this isn't part of the hack, but I figure we might have some time since not that many people might have this. Thanks guys and again great work Pseudo.

[Pseudomizer]

Originally Posted by yeloc

I installed the digichat hack and it worked perfectly on my test server. Nice job Pseudo.

Thanks.

Originally Posted by yeloc

Now I have a question for everyone because I get a little confused when it comes to this. I run my website from my own server at home, so when I connected to my test server I would open my forum from 192.168.1.x. Then I would go to chat and Digichat would open just find without issue. The thing that I get confused about is when I install Digi to my real server. Do I put in my local ip of 192.168.1.x or the IP that the world gets to like "http://www.nottashouseofpancakes.com"? I know that seems stupid, but I'm confused by this.

This is very easy. Forget your testserver. Just think about your environment. You have a webserver with an IP adress and an URL. If you install the DigiChat on the same server you will have the /DigiChat folder in your webroot OR you install it on a different URL and different folder which you have to set in your apache config. Let's assume you put it into your root folder.

So you will have / which will be http://www.nottashouseofpancakes.com and below that you will have /DigiChat and /forum. So all clients will connect to the chat through http://www.nottashouseofpancakes.com...es/Default/bla bla bla. You can also use the IP but this will only work if your apache webserver has set the * = default webroot to your http://www.nottashouseofpancakes.com folder. So i highly recommend to use the URL name and not the IP if you are on the same server. This differs if you have a dedicated chat server like me. That's why i offer both in my hack.

Originally Posted by yeloc

Also, I don't use the standard port of 80. I had to change my port to 8085. So when I install Digichat do I put in "http://www.nottashouseofpancakes.com:8085 as the host name"? If I'm reading correctly I think this program doesn't work to well with non standard ports and if it does you have to add a special piece of software which is a tad overwhelming. To work around this could I install the Digichat part to another machine and run that on port 80? I know this isn't part of the hack, but I figure we might have some time since not that many people might have this. Thanks guys and again great work Pseudo.

This is a little bit tricky and it takes some time to understand it. Per default the DigiChat starts on port 8396 and not on port 80. If you wish to specify on specific port you can set this in your parameters file in your DigiChat installation folder ( not the http folder ) and it will look like this filename "parameters":

out=/var/log/digi_out.txt
err=/var/log/digi_err.txt
ports=8396

So if you go with the standard installation your clients will connect to the chat through port 8396 and they will use port 80 to load all the grafics like emoticons, usericons, etc. If you have an error in your configuration with the http path then all clients will be able to connect to port 8396 but they will not see any graphics in the chat. Let me show you how this works:

Client -> loads Applet via HTTP port 80 from your specified webserver
Applet -> connects to the chatserver via port 8396 and starts the chat
Chat -> loads all icons via port 80 from your http://www.nottashouseofpancakes.com/DigiChat folder

You can set the port for the chat to whatever you want but the problem will be that users behind a firewall will not be able to connect. That's why there is the offer from HTTP Tunneling. There are multiple free software packages out there to run HTTP Tunneling ... BUT ... what happens with HTTP tunneling ?

Per default the applet start checking the following ports for the chat application:
- 80
- 443
- 8396

If nothing is found it will stop. If you specify your own port that does NOT include HTTP Tunneling. HTTP Tunneling is, to route all trafic to a specific port through your port 80 or 8080. The problem will be that you will get performance problems because all chat clients will connect through your port.

A good trick here is to use the port 443 as your HTTP Tunneling port because most of the adminstrators out there don't use/need SSL for their webservers and port 443 is open is 99% of the firewalls. Or you use port 8080 which is also used for proxy environments and due to this 90% of the firewalls have this port open.

I hope i did not confuse you with all this information but it took me 1 week to understand how it works and to install Tomcat for HTTP Tunneling through port 8080. Per default i have no HTTP Tunneling login enabled. The user has to specifically choose the firewall login to enter the chat as you can see in the drop down menu of the Chat start template.

Did this help or did this confuse you more ? I am more then happy to go deeper into this. Just tell me.

Cheers,

[Pseudomizer]

Originally Posted by leitel

I have committed to Enterprise to gain not only the IM but the VOIP features. I would be happy to Skype with you regarding this since I believe you are in Germany. My handle is larryeitel.

That's nice. We are talking about messangers and you are offering Skype for a phone call. I like that. I have to search and reinstall this software but after that we can have a conversation.

Cheers,