Chat Modifications - Ideal Chat Lite (facebook style bottom chat/chatroom bar) v1.3.0

This modification adds a bottom bar chat system to your board.

Features

• Friend?s Online List (mutal or all friends)
• Integration with vBulletin's ignore system so users can block messages from people they want
• General Chat Room
• User-to-User Chat
  • Chat with friends
• Support for infinite number of open chats
• Automatic Updating of chat messages
• New message indicators
  • Indicator on Chat Tab for new messages
  • A sound plays for new messages
  • Page title flashes for new messages
  • Indicator for new messages on tabs out of view
• Multiple window support
  • Supports users having your site open in multiple windows/tabs
  • Changes in one window automatically apply to other windows
• Automatically disables chat bar for mobile browsers
  • Help save bandwidth for your mobile users

Settings

• Admin Settings
  • Chat online
  • Ban individual users from chat
  • Update stream time limit
  • Update stream delay
  • Settings & Chat Room link Positions
    • Change where the links show at, or hide them all-together
• Usergroup Settings
  • Can use chat
  • Can use chat room
• User Settings
  • Hide Chat bar
  • New message notification method

Change Log
For a full list of changes, please visit: http://community.idealwebtech.com/in...ngelog&file=15

Installation/Upgrade
See included readme file.

Demo
You can see a demo here (You can can register a new account, or use the Login, "Ideal Chat Demo", and password, "chatdemo") This demo is of the pro version which can be found here!

Support
This modification is released for free, and as such we don't officially support it; however, as time permits we will try to offer support on it. We will NOT be monitoring this thread on a daily basis, your best bet for a fast reply would be to go post here.

Common Issues/Topics
Chat Bar Don't Show Up?
Have you configured the usergroup settings? This is the most common issue we see, and 99% of the time it is due to usergroup settings not being configured properly. So if your bar is not showing up, please verify your usergroup settings before reporting it as an issue.

Messages Don't Show Up?
We are aware of an issue causing messages to not show up for some people, and are looking into fixes.

Modification Has Conflict With Another Product
There is always a chance that two products will conflict with each other! We are aware of some, but please feel free to tell us about any products you find to conflict via our Bug Tracker on our site.

Chat Doesn't Support Certain Characters
The chat can only support the characters your board itself can support! If you would like to support certain characters, you must have your board using a charset that supports them. We have only ever once noticed a chat that didn't support every character the board did, and we are looking in it.

Chat Kills My Server
We have tested the chat extensively for server friendliness, and have found it to be very gentle on servers. We have seen the script run with hundreds of active users without putting hardly any load on the server. However, an improperly configured server may result in any reverse-AJAX/push-AJAX/Comet based chat script killing the server. If you find that your server slows down after installation, you may want to talk with your host about raising your MySQL and Apache Max Connection Limits to a more appropriate amount!

[Smile :-)]

i don't like how this mod show the time & date of the messages.
so i change it to show it like my "Log Date Format" option in ACP.

if you want to do so too just edit ideal_chat_update_stream.php file and search for:

PHP Code:

$templater->register('time_sent', vbdate('M j, g:i:s a',$message['timestamp'])); 


replace with:

PHP Code:

$templater->register('time_sent', vbdate($vbulletin->options['logdateformat'],$message['timestamp'])); 


please add it to your next version

[kingMOB]

Very nice mod =)

Only problems are the latin characters not showing properly and the fact that if I enable it to all users the server is taken down due to hundreds of stream connections (mysql) and an apache full of "Sending Reply" connections =(

[montda]

this mod effect some other mod as 8WR Media Library and PhotoPlog which is disable very important navigation links

I though the new version would solve it but...Q_Q

I'd appreciated any help to solve this.

[Ideal Web Tech]

Originally Posted by kingMOB

Very nice mod =)

Only problems are the latin characters not showing properly and the fact that if I enable it to all users the server is taken down due to hundreds of stream connections (mysql) and an apache full of "Sending Reply" connections =(

Apache should be able to handle over 1k active connections without much trouble on even moderate server hardware. Mysql will hold more connections open currently (1 per user active in the chat), but with some tuning the extra connections shouldn't be a big deal. We are looking into options to try and see about avoiding having to maintain a mysql connection open for each stream but thats a bit tricky and has all kinds of other complications we are looking into solving. Ideally we can come up with a fix for this without stressing the filesystem, and without requiring memcache.

The character issue for now we can't do a whole lot about it right the second, but we will look into options as we have time after the next major update.

[danhaga]

Just installed the latest version and I am still having the same issues.

-When I click on a friend online and send a message it doesn't show up for myself or them unless I refresh the page. Does not show up real time.

-Chatroom does the same thing.

-Getting lots of Error: Reload messages

I am also now getting DB errors on my email:
Database error in vBulletin :
mysql_connect() [<a href='function.mysql-connect'>function.mysql-connect</a>]: Lost connection to MySQL server at 'reading initial communication packet', system error: 111
/data/13/1/81/81/1244407/user/1326992/htdocs/portal/includes/class_core.php on line 314


MySQL Error :
Error Number :
Request Date : Tuesday, August 9th 2011 @ 09:28:38 AM
Error Date : Tuesday, August 9th 2011 @ 09:28:38 AM
Script : xxxx/ideal_chat_update_stream.php
Referrer : xxxx/forum.php
IP Address :xxxxx
Username :
Classname : vB_Database
MySQL Version :

And just an FYI. Problems are the same in FF, IE and Chrome.

[basilrath]

I get exactly the same errors all the time ........... had to uninstall

[kingMOB]

Originally Posted by Ideal Web Tech

Apache should be able to handle over 1k active connections without much trouble on even moderate server hardware. Mysql will hold more connections open currently (1 per user active in the chat), but with some tuning the extra connections shouldn't be a big deal. We are looking into options to try and see about avoiding having to maintain a mysql connection open for each stream but thats a bit tricky and has all kinds of other complications we are looking into solving. Ideally we can come up with a fix for this without stressing the filesystem, and without requiring memcache.

The character issue for now we can't do a whole lot about it right the second, but we will look into options as we have time after the next major update.

Don't know what can be changed here, there is more than 2000 users online, mysql connections goes up 16x and apache requests 7x when the plugin is active to everybody, which kills the server: an octocore with more then 12gb can not handle it. Is there anything that I can experience here to solve this? This is really a good plugin that I would like to share with our users.

[Ideal Web Tech]

Originally Posted by kingMOB

Don't know what can be changed here, there is more than 2000 users online, mysql connections goes up 16x and apache requests 7x when the plugin is active to everybody, which kills the server: an octocore with more then 12gb can not handle it. Is there anything that I can experience here to solve this? This is really a good plugin that I would like to share with our users.

Tuning of mysql and apache should help considerable, as yes the script does create more connection overhead for both apache and mysql than typically they are configured to handle when you start talking that many users. The memcache stream Tim is working on should avoid most the extra mysql load, but it won't be ready for a bit still as its quite complex to make sure it works properly. In fact the memcache stream should drop the overall resource requirements besides apache connections considerable. The only thing we could really look into doing to lessen the apache connection count would be a server side script designed to feed the JavaScript in place of relying on apache.

[ngocol]

i got 500 internal server after i setup for my register member ..yes it took resource on my server .but in my opinion..its a very good mod..

[Ideal Web Tech]

We might see about pushing out a bug fix release tonight or tomorrow, while we continue to work on the next major release. We have fixed several issues already on our current dev build that should increase the stability of the system for most of the people who were having issues with the chat messages not showing up.