Chat Modifications - Envolve Chat Integration Module

About the Envolve Chat Plugin
This module will connect your vBulletin forum to Envolve chat. Envolve is a chat toolbar similar to Facebook's chat bar that allows your users to have group and one-on-one chats with each other while browsing your forums.

This mod requires an API key from Envolve in order to function. Visit http://www.envolve.com to get one. A free version is available that provides a full feature set for up to 25 concurrent users. Higher numbers of chatters require a paid account.

This mod integrates your forum's account system with Envolve so that when users are logged into your vBulletin site it also logs them into the chat. In addition, it integrates your profile pictures / avatars and profile information. With the 2.0 release of the mod, other users can now view your profile information and get a link to your profile simply by placing their mouse over your name.

The Envolve chat system is a rich solution for community chat. Some of its features include group chat (both public and private), one-on-one chat, the ability to pop chats out into their own windows, moderation controls (boot / block / ban / timed ban), chat message translation, resizable chat windows, chat sharing, and drag-and-drop chat invitations. As a hosted solution, all chat traffic is handled by Envolve's servers and will not place any additional load on your server.

Installation:
Detailed installation instructions can be found here:
https://www.envolve.com/docs/vbulletin-chat-plugin.html. They are also provided in the Readme.txt file.
You can see and try out the chat at http://www.envolve.com.

This version of the mod will work for both vBulletin 4.x and vBulletin 3.8.x.

Screenshots:
Here the "People List" can be seen open in the lower right hand corner of the page. This shows all users who are currently viewing the forum. This site owner has chosen to only allow logged-in users to chat.


Here a public group chat has been opened, and the user has moused-over another user to see his profile information.


Here a user is creating a new group chat that will be shown to the other users on the site. He has also "popped-out" the "General" chat into its own window.

[MagiKelly]

I've disabled this again. As a chat add on it is great but it was really slowing down the page speed of the site and I was getting way to many complaints. since disabling it the forum is running much faster.

[andrew.lee]

Hi MagiKelly - If you can shoot me a PM with info about your site we can take a look at it. It should be very fast. Also let me know where your users are physically located. Currently our servers are on the West Coast of the US, so if you're far from there that might be having an impact. Regardless though it shouldn't affect the load times on your site, as we are carefully to always load the chat data *last* after everything else on the page has loaded.

[x3n]

Ohh NICE Job it works!

[andrew.lee]

Great! We'd appreciate a rating / review when you have a chance.

[Poker Face]

Originally Posted by andrew.lee

Could you be a little more specific? I'm not sure I understand. Are some of the usernames getting logged in, but others are not? Are those other groups still able to chat as guests or can they just not see the chat at all?

Logged in on the site and not showing in the "People Here" block...

As far as I can tell, everyone is able to see the Chat blocks.

I'm going to send you a PM with site link... Thank-You in advance!

Originally Posted by andrew.lee

Chat Admins have the ability to boot / block / ban unruly users and to remove chats from the page.

Ok, Thanks!

[clubvr4]

Hi,

This has potential good work so far! - but, i see several hurdles before this becomes 1 stop chat feature.

1. The costs, it's very expensive.
2. Hosted, this causes delay - we must compare to facebook as they are leading this field - There you can surf whilst the chat stays in place, with this it goes away, re-appearing only once the webpage has loaded - in some cases i found that when i start typing the title before the chat appears, at which point the chat grabs my curser attention and i type the thread title into the last chat window i had open. Very frustrating this.
3. It appears that a public chat still requires people to be invited? Why is this? Also, if they X the tab, it disappears for a while, a public chat should remain indefinitely in my opinion especially if I have configured it at the back end.
4. allow for far more customisation of colours and css styles, it is important to have it look like the site - im sure others will agree.
5. less is more, there is to much info everywhere, minimise information - allow options to disable the extra info for users (when you hover over name) its very messy and worthless for our site.

Thanks

[Parture]

How do I fix this blue circle error with the line through it? See pic. It started a couple days ago and never goes away.

[andrew.lee]

@Parture - THat is the result of a user's image not loading properly. Once that user leaves / returns to your site it should go away.

[Parture]

Originally Posted by andrew.lee

@Parture - THat is the result of a user's image not loading properly. Once that user leaves / returns to your site it should go away.

That's not correct in this case because it's been there approaching a week now. It's never gone away even once. I don't think that person has been online the whole time.

And if you go to the envolve.com page you will see they have two blue circles in their "Ask a Question" general chat which have been unchangeed for nearly a week now.

I got an email from the staff and they say they are working on it trying to fix it.

[Parture]

It looks like envolve solved the above mentioned problem, but I discovered a new problem. See pic.


The little torso admin icon is not shown up, just for admins for some reason.

This may be related because as soon as the above problem was fixed this new problem arose.