Live Chat (Hack/Addon)

Hey guys, I've whipped up a VERY basic version of a possible live chat hack/addon that I'm working on.

It's missing many things such as templates, registration, profiles, etc for two reasons:

a) I don't have the full vBulletin code (poor man)
b) What you see took about an hour, so it's all coming.

Actually, it isn't really tied into the vBulletin code yet as you can see. Later on, each forum will have it's own live chat and administrators will be able to kick people out and whatnot.

The demonstration is here:

http://crontab.org/forum/chat.php

Suggestions and new ideas are always appreciated, but I'm probably going to wait until I can get my hands on the full version to continue developing this .. that is if anyone thinks it's useful. Again, this is only the preview/test .. it'll be must more robust later on.

Hello,

How server intensive is this add-on? I noticed it refreshed the page every 5 seconds.

I noticed someone say that it would be cool to implement a vBulletin Instant Message system. I wonder if this would be a start.

Frankly, I'm not sure. The code is really light right now, but could get more complicated as more is added. I already have a few ideas on optimizing it, but I'm sure in the end it will end up somewhat server intensive.

Argh, for those of you who got errors the first time .. try now. I forgot I was linking directly to the php file, should be all fixed now.