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.

[DementedMindz]

another nice feature would be to always have the shout input at top this way if you scroll down it still stays at the top for example if you set it to 25 shouts to show and you look at the last shout you cant type in the box cause it will scroll up too.

[Dream]

Updated, 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

[arco]

Awesome!

*upgraded*

Hope you figure out the IE7 issue.

[arco]

Noticed a bug in the URL auto parsing.

If you type something like this: Click here!

you get this: http://[url]http://www.mysite.com[/url]

[Dream]

use this one and try for me please

[aranthorn]

Small, easy on the server, simple....

Brilliant.

[Dream]

Thanks

I updated the zip file, updated chatbox.php only, fixed the bug arco found.

Also updated the instructions to the chatbox on the top. The collapse image should be correct now.

[arco]

Perfect!
All good now. :up:

[Dream]

Can anyone having problems with IE7 test it with this chatbox.php

All works fine in my board so I can't test it

[Adam21]

Just curious only.Is there any major difference between this mod and the vbshout2.1 flatfile shoutbox?I'm using IE7 too.

By the way,great job and thank you Dream.:up:

*Clicks install