Embedded chat

This "hack" will allow you to run a semi-integrated (free or paid) chat room "inside" your forum:

+ It's quite generic and should work with several chat providers (made a seperate template, just for the applet code)
+ The chat room will be displayed within your forum's structure,
+ The chat applet will be sized according to the user's screen resolution (could get scary at 1600x1200 )
+ People will be logged into the chat room using their forum usernames (if the chat supports auto-login)
+ Invalid characters in usernames will be replaced before logging in to the chat, plus too lengty names will be shortened
+ Easy installation

- At this time there's no feedback from the chat room to the forum. A "chat monitor" is planned though (version 2)

The install docs and template examples are mainly focussed on the chat provider we use (http://www.raidersoft.com), but it shouldn't be a problem adjusting one or two things to get this thing to work with your own chat provider.

The sizes of the chat applet haven't been tested out fully. I have no clue how bigger resolutions work out. All the rest seems to work fine.

Hope you like it...

[update 1.4]Sizes can now be set more easily, just by editing the chatredirect template, nothing else.
Added support for raidersoft's ICE, which is more flexible with usernames.

[Smoothie]

yea, you are 100% correct. i missed that 4. anyway, works like a charm. One of the best additions to our forums.

[Smoothie]

BTW, they upgraded me in a matter of minutes as well. $49 well spent.

[datatec]

Thanks for your hard work and sharing with all.

Okay, being totally dumb here lol

My server provides chat room options, Is this the same thing?

I mean, does this incorporate the chat room facilities on my server. rotohost.

Thanks in advance

[jjj0923]

I installed this hack and bought the upgraded chat room, but all of my users are getting "invalid login name" when attempting to access the chat room. I am passing the $username variable in the chatbit template...

ps: I've told people to delete their browser cache and that does not work either.

any ideas?

[wot-Mike]

jjj0923,

Did it work with the free version?

If so:
on raidersoft's admin page, on the General page, did you turn on "require validation", or what's that setting called?

Did you change the files in any way?

If no on everything, pm me your chatbit, and your General settings at raidersoft. An url and test account might help too

=================

Datatec,

What kind of chat rooms does your server provide? This hack should work with a lot of java based chats. All that's needed is to dump the code to call the chat into the chatbit template (with a few minor adjustments, I think). Do you have an example of such code?
Otherwise simply try it out. All that's really needed to get this thing going is the creation of three templates, and uploading the chat.php file. No modification of any vBulletin file or database setting is necessary. If it's never going to work (or you don't like it) undoing the install is easily done.

[wot-Mike]

jjj0923,

I meant: did you turn on the "Verify Handle" setting on your general page, not "require validation". Don't know where I got that from

[jjj0923]

thanks I figured that on out. yes, that was one of my problems. The other one was that I allow my forum members to use names up to 20 characters. The java chat client only allows 15 and will not let someone in with a $username greater than 15 characters long. I modifed chat.php to truncate $usernames longer than 15 and now they can get logged in automatically.

thanks!

- jeff

[jjj0923]

wot-mike...

would you please email me, I have some question for you.
webmaster@fastboats.info

thanks

- jeff

[wot-Mike]

Hmm, I never even thought about that. I have our forum set to usernames up to 15 characters. A reminiscent from an older one, where long usernames really messed up the layout. Guess more "stuff" out there has problems with 15+ characters in usernames...

Anyway, the accepted usernames for raidersoft chat are 2 to 15 characters, alfa-numerical only and no other characters but an underscore. The chat.php deals with that at least, but not the lenght.

So, what change did you make to deal with longer names? Time to put up version 1.4, I think, hehe.

[jjj0923]

I truncated them:

$username1=ereg_replace("[^A-Za-z0-9]", "_", $bbuserinfo['username']);

$myLength = strlen( $username1 );

if ($myLength > 15) {
$username = substr( $username1, 0, 15 );
} else {
$username = $username1;
}