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.

[Zaeolos]

Nevermind about the colored names, I figured it out. If anyone else needs to be able to do this, here it is:

Edit the chatbox.php file in the forums directory in 2 locations.

Find on line 178 & 318

$select = 'c.shoutid, c.userid, c.username, c.shout, c.dateline, c.ipaddress, c.color, u.usergroupid';

Change this to

$select = 'c.shoutid, c.userid, c.username, c.shout, c.dateline, c.ipaddress, c.color, u.usergroupid, u.displaygroupid';

[rnmcd]

I'm not even smart enough to figure out what the "Message Colors" option in the admincp does.

[chillingcafe]

let me try this

Done and it cnsumes a bit of more resources than the MGC Chatbox

[Dream]

Chatbox has been updated, version 2.0

- fixed minor bug that could stop the chatbox from working if the ajax response had newlines
- fixed bug that the chatbox was using the primary usergroup colors instead of the display usergroup colors for the username coloring
- fixed instructions for the chatbox under the navbar or under the forum list, old code's collapse wasn't working properly
- changed the default Chatbox place on the forum home page in the install instructions to show it after the forum listing
- updated the install instructions to be easier to follow and have more info

To upgrade follow the instructions in upgrade.txt

[Dream]

Originally Posted by rnmcd

I'm not even smart enough to figure out what the "Message Colors" option in the admincp does.

Message colors lets your users pick a color to show their messages in that color.

[Dream]

VERSION HISTORY

version 1.2
- Added option to let users delete their own messages.
- Added option to show username links with user group colors. Note this may raise resource usage.
- Added WOL support.
- Added option to change the HTML tag used around usernames.
- Added smilies!

version 1.3
- Now when the Chatbox auto-refreshes, the message the user was typing isn't lost.
This is not perfect, because by the time the Chatbox refreshes it gets the message, and the user has time to type more stuff while the page is loading, so it may lose some letters.

version 1.4
- Added Ajax!
Now you can set your refresh rate to 3 seconds and make your server cry to mommy!

version 1.5
- Show Time? now correctly removes time from messages. When it does, mouseover the user name will show the time.
- Added automatic URL parsing. Requires BBCode to be enabled.
- Added hide refresh button option, good if you have a low refresh interval.
- Added option to change the image smilies button into a normal button, same as send and refresh.
- Added Banned Users option.
- Input buttons now use the correct button CSS class.
- Added cron files to the zip file, auto prune and auto post, the instructions to use them are in cron/cron.txt

version 1.6
- Fixed IE7 bug, the ajax code now uses vB's ajax functions.

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.

version 1.8
- Forced align="left" on main <div>s because people were having problems with the chatbox content being centered.
- Changed javascript function name from deleteShout() to deleteMessage(), because this is a chatbox not a shoutbox :P and the name was visible to users on mouseover
- Added time CSS class to times so it matches the rest of the forum (btw Mark I always loved your forum since I made games for v3arcade)
- Added javascript isRefreshing check, so the chatbox won't have two parallel refresh instances and show duplicate messages, to fix problem on slower connections.
- When showing latest messages at the bottom, the chatbox now will only scroll to the bottom when there are new messages. (only works if you are not updating all messages on each refresh)
- Fixed javascript warning, was getting shoutsDiv <div> by it's name, wasn't defining shoutsDiv variable. (wonder how it worked in the first place)
- Added option to update all messages on refresh. This will fix deleted messages not being removed from users chatboxes, but can highly increase resource usage. The default method is getting only the new messages.
- Added message colors. You must enable it in the Chatbox options. You can change the available colors in the options.

version 1.9
- Added option to disable auto refreshing for guests. This can save resources if you have a low refresh rate.

version 2.0
- fixed minor bug that could stop the chatbox from working if the ajax response had newlines
- fixed bug that the chatbox was using the primary usergroup colors instead of the display usergroup colors for the username coloring
- fixed instructions for the chatbox under the navbar or under the forum list, old code's collapse wasn't working properly
- changed the default Chatbox place on the forum home page in the install instructions to show it after the forum listing
- updated the install instructions to be easier to follow and have more info

[James Argo]

First post on the board.

Dream, thanks for the updated version!

In 1.9 post announcement, you said 1.9 is your final version and didn't think of upgrading it anymore. But then again, here comes the 2.0!

BTW, can someone assist me how to set it so I can have only last 50 messages shown? I mean I want it to delete first message automaticaly after it reaches 51 messages so only 50 last messages shown...

Thank you!


Jaymz

[Dream]

You are welcome

You can turn off the "Show Pages?" option, so it will only show the last 50 messages, but they will still exist in the database. Then you can use the files in the cron/ folder to auto prune your messages say older than 30 days, or just keep the old messages in case you want to see them later.

[James Argo]

Awesome, fast reply! Thanks alot Dream! I appreciate all your effort on it

[AshleyTwo]

Is it possible to install this in a subforum rather than on the home page? Thanks.