Embedded chat

This "hack" will allow you to run a semi-integrated (free or paid) chat room "inside" your forum:

+ It's quite generic and should work with several chat providers (made a seperate template, just for the applet code)
+ The chat room will be displayed within your forum's structure,
+ The chat applet will be sized according to the user's screen resolution (could get scary at 1600x1200 )
+ People will be logged into the chat room using their forum usernames (if the chat supports auto-login)
+ Invalid characters in usernames will be replaced before logging in to the chat, plus too lengty names will be shortened
+ Easy installation

- At this time there's no feedback from the chat room to the forum. A "chat monitor" is planned though (version 2)

The install docs and template examples are mainly focussed on the chat provider we use (http://www.raidersoft.com), but it shouldn't be a problem adjusting one or two things to get this thing to work with your own chat provider.

The sizes of the chat applet haven't been tested out fully. I have no clue how bigger resolutions work out. All the rest seems to work fine.

Hope you like it...

[update 1.4]Sizes can now be set more easily, just by editing the chatredirect template, nothing else.
Added support for raidersoft's ICE, which is more flexible with usernames.

[Axel Foley]

The hack is perfectly working...

Two questions:

1) In the security txt you say:

Go to: http://freechat.raidersoft.com and log in.
On the "General" page, scroll down a bit, and there's what we want:
* Disable /nick Command
Put a mark behind this one to activate it and save your changes

On the General Tab at raidersoft.com I couldn't find that settings. Could you verify? Don't know how to disable it.


2) Is it possible to hack index.php so to have a Who's on chat bar, like the Who's Online one? How could I do that?


Thanks for sharing this hack...it's great.

[wot-Mike]

Are you using the free chat? This setting is not available on the free chat. Most of the txt I wrote is based on the paid version. It doesn't matter for the installation instructions, but it does for the extra's

And a "who's chatting" add-on is planned, but I wonder if it's better to wait for vB3 before spending too much time on someting that might need to be completely rewritten then.
On the other hand, having sort of a base ready by then might help.

I'm playing with such a thing though, but I don't want to change tables and such. If it's going to be made, then it should use whatever vBulletin has to offer already

(Do I ever sleep? Hmm, just about every time I close my eyes for more then a few seconds, I drop off :sleep: )

[Smoothie]

yea, upgrade to the pro version. You'll have more settings than you'll know what to do with. I upgraded and it rocks. And that's correct, the setting for disabling nicks is not in the free version.

[ladyfyre]

ok....i got everything merged and working (will soon post the chatbit template info for anyone wanting to use Jpilot and WTfrontend with this)...

however, i have one question: a few people wanted to know if there was a way to get rid of the sizing thing, as they were previously able to resize their chat windows, and now cannot.....

shouldn't there be a way to put in a link above the applet which would let you resize your chat window?

[wot-Mike]

Well, you can call the chat.php with "prefixed" settings, like
http://blah.com/chat.php?setwidth=720&setheight=320

Adding such links to your template(s) will allow people to click them and choose the applet size of their choice.

To explain about how the chat.php works:
1- It first checks for a valid username (if not then the login window appears)
2 - Then it checks for setwidth and setheight variables (if not it calls chatredirect to get those)
3 - If valid variables are found, then the username is "modified" (if necessary) and then the chatbit and chat templates are called, et voila...

By putting setheight and setwitdh directly into the url, you'll bypass the chatredirect...

Maybe the next version should look at the browser window size instead of the screen resolution? But I think that's more, umm, sensitive to weirdness. Well, let's try and see...

I'm curious about your chatbit template, by the way

[ladyfyre]

No problem....i am going through them now to take out a few site proprietary things, and will post a zip when done.....

[ladyfyre]

Ok....so in order to avoid user confusion, I created a zip file of the jpilot embed add-on pack I did...but please note:

THE AUTHOR OF THIS HACK STILL DESERVES ALL THE CREDIT.

All I am doing is sharing some of the modifications to it that I made in order to make it work prettily with jpilot.

I also found a free IRC server and put in the connection info for it.

Realistically, if you unzip the file, and upload all contents in the "forumsroot" directory into your forum root, and add the three templates, it will run as is, without any modifications needed.

However: You DO want to at least go ahead and change the channel names....as I doubt you want to call your chat room "#test", or share it with every other person downloading this hack who doesn't edit the channels list

I edited the install file, to make it all make sense.....and renamed the original install file.

The free server which is listed in the parameters does not support Nickserv/Chanserv/Botserv/Memoserv, so you can either use a different server, or simply use the contents of the "without_serv_options" version of the chatbit template.

There are three versions of the chatbit template included:
one with all options, one with op controls, but without *serv options, and one with no options, just the applet.

There are also two colors of graphics: blue and green. the green is the main one, as that is what i use for our forums, and the blue is in a subfolder, but you can easily copy them over the others.

Hope it helps

Since the file is too big (due to the graphics) to attach here....the file can be downloaded here

[ladyfyre]

Ok....last thing....but here is a screenshot for those interested in seeing how it works.

Mind you, this is just with my color scheme, but yours will adapt according to the theme of your board.

[Axel Foley]

Ladyfyre, first of all I wanted to tell you that it works fine, but I had to make some modifications:

1. In controls.js you have:

PHP Code:

if (document.images) {
    away_1 = new Image
    away_2 = new Image
    away_1.src = 'gfx/setaway.gif'
    away_2.src = 'gfx/setback.gif'
} 


You have to change to:

PHP Code:

if (document.images) {
    away_1 = new Image
    away_2 = new Image
    away_1.src = 'chatgfx/setaway.gif'
    away_2.src = 'chatgfx/setback.gif'
} 


2. In the chatbit template you capture the user clicks on actions in this way:

PHP Code:

<a href="javascript:void(-1);" onClick="javascript:jpilot('ping');"><img src="chatgfx/ping.gif" width="70" height="20" vspace="2" hspace="1" name="ping" border="0" alt="ping selected user" align="absmiddle"></a>&nbsp; 


The problem with this is that the browser opens a new empty window everytime you click on an action button. I had to change it in this way:

PHP Code:

<a href="javascript:void(-1);" target="_self" onClick="javascript:jpilot('ping');"><img src="chatgfx/ping.gif" width="70" height="20" vspace="2" hspace="1" name="ping" border="0" alt="ping selected user" align="absmiddle"></a>&nbsp; 


In practice I just added the target="_self" attribute to tell the browser to render the link in the current frame and not open a new one.

I attach the chatbit modified template for anyone who's trying this hack.

Anyway thanks for sharing this one...

[ladyfyre]

good calls there Axel

mine is edited differently from the version I posted, so I appreciate you pointing things out!

The target issue is actually one that I created myself....mainly because the applet had one big downfall: links clicked on in chat opened in the same window, thus kicking the user out of the chat. So I added the page default for opening in a new window. I think I changed most of the links to self...but obviously looks like I missed a couple!!!

Thanks for the revisions