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]

Ok I'll think about that

Right now you can edit your chatbox.php, find

<input type="button" name="refresh" value="'.$text_refresh.'" onclick="getNewShouts()" class="smallfont"> '.$pagelinks.$smilieslink.'<br /></form></div>'."\n";

replace for

'.$pagelinks.' <input type="button" name="smilies" value="smilies" onclick="openSmilies()" class="smallfont"><br /></form></div>'."\n";

and remove these both lines

document.chatboxForm.elements['refresh'].disabled = true;

document.chatboxForm.elements['refresh'].disabled = false;

[DementedMindz]

nice thank you that works real well looks much nicer too along with that mouseover time

[arco]

Originally Posted by Dream

Arco, there is no way to refresh a page exactly when the user posts a new message, I think your last shoutbox had a low refresh interval instead.

You're probably right. It had this cool fade effect on the text message when it appeared, making the impression it happened realtime.

[seangworld]

ok, i went thru 18 pages looking for the answer to my question. someone else had asked it on page 6, a reply was given on page 7, but it was incomplete.

the question, in my own words, was how do we remove the chatbox from below the 'who's online' section because we want it under the navbar?

i put my shoutbox under the navbar, and it's there, but now my forum has 2 frickin shoutboxes.

also, your instructions do not specify where to put the chatbox.php.

back to the chatbox on my forum, in both spots, it's showing the word 'array' just to the left of the box to input text.

[Flow Fusion]

Originally Posted by seangworld

ok, i went thru 18 pages looking for the answer to my question. someone else had asked it on page 6, a reply was given on page 7, but it was incomplete.

the question, in my own words, was how do we remove the chatbox from below the 'who's online' section because we want it under the navbar?

i put my shoutbox under the navbar, and it's there, but now my forum has 2 frickin shoutboxes.

also, your instructions do not specify where to put the chatbox.php.

back to the chatbox on my forum, in both spots, it's showing the word 'array' just to the left of the box to input text.

1) You will have to delete the script in your forum template that has it under the who's online to make it only appear under the navbar.

2) The chatbox.php would have to be loaded into your index.

3) If 'array' is being shown then the chatbox hack was pasted into the middle of another script. That's not a good thing! Be careful to select the chatbox script and delete it, then put it after the 'array' script.

[Dream]

Thanks Flow Fusion.

seangworld, the chatbox.php goes in your main forum folder, I missed that in the install.txt and will be there in the next update.

To remove the bottom chatbox, remove the forumhome template edit in install.txt.

Not sure why array is showing for you (it isn't for other people), send me the url for your chatbox installation via PM for me to check it out if it's still happening.

[viper357]

I have read through the whole thread but I am still a bit confused with the 2 different versions.

Will the 1.4 version autorefresh and can I set the time delay on it? I have no idea what Ajax is all about

[Dream]

Yes the ajax version has the option to set a refresh interval too. Ajax just means the whole page doesn't refresh, the javascript talks to the server and updates (refresh) the messages.

[viper357]

ok, i have just installed the 1.4 but I am getting a 404 page not found error

http://www.marineaquariumsa.com/forums.php?#

[Dream]

Did you upload chatbox.php to your main forum folder? I forgot that in the instructions :/