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.

[ExcErr]

any screens?

[Floris]

I wish to use this, but I do not know which 'free' chat I can use, and one that allows me to connect to a given server, instead of only localhost! Which one do you use and which one can you advice? err. I couldn't get eIRC to work though ..

[wot-Mike]

Well, I started with the free chat from http://www.raidersoft.com, and it convinced me to go paid. The free version does have ads in them (logo sized), but there not annoying and no "register" messages inside the chat room. Simply excellent stuff

I don't have suitable screenshots right now, but will later today.

[mayja]

Just tried it. I like it!
One question though- what do I need to change to make the screen size just a bit smaller than the settings you have in the chatredirect template. My screensize for example, is 1024x768 and the chat screen appears as 955 wide, which blows out my content table (set to 90%). I tried changing the sizes in chatredirect and the array in chat.php but it doesn't seem to make a difference, it keeps going back to 955 width.
Thanks!

[wot-Mike]

I think you did everything right:
in chatredirect change:
chat.php?setwidth=955&setheight=330

to something like:
chat.php?setwidth=925&setheight=330

Don't know if the size is right, it takes some experimenting.

(Do NOT use percentages! The whole reason for this setsize construction is because IE6 has a bug in it's java support, which effectively kills a chat room re-load (the first load is fine, and reload fails). Chris from raidersoft support found this out for me )

chat.php the array should contain the same values as the set"size" from the javascript bit.

Now you've all done that, meaning that the chat is cached somewhere. I ran into the same problem.
Either empty your browsers cache,
or (in my case):
PHP Accelerator had cached chat.php, but failed to see any subsequent minor changes. I had to stop apache, clear out the PHP Accelerator cache, end start apache again

Hope that helps

[wot-Mike]

The size array isn't necessary, but I put it there to filter out any weird input, and to "force" a valid layout. The layout thing is still not foolproof though

[mayja]

Hey thanks! I cleared the cache and that did the trick. Looks great!

[wot-Mike]

Cool!

Could you share your settings with us?
I mean forumwidth%, versus the setwidth settings in chatredirect

Such settings might help others with different widths settings on their forums. The basic settings in the install are based on full width

[wot-Mike]

Ok, here's a screenshot.

It's based on a 800x600 resolution to keep the size down a bit

This is raidersoft's paid chat, but the free version looks about the same (except for the logo, hehe)