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.

[Dream]

I'm not sure about v2.1, but v2.0 has an auto refresh interval set to 10 seconds, hitting your server every 10 seconds per person using the chat.

This mod you can set the refresh to whatever you like, and it has a refresh button.

I'm not sure what else to tell you, as I didn't use vBShout, but maybe someone else can.

[eurofunny]

Thanx for this Update, this is the best Shoutbox i ever seen.

I have a idea at the moment, is there a way to allowed administrators put small flashanimation with sound in this shoutbox??

[eurofunny]

I find the Time disabled only for guest is good. Is there a way to do this or for the next Update activated for Usergroups.

[odonel]

anyone else has isssues with the auto announcer ?

"PHP Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in d:\webscv\sites\site1\forum\includes\cron\chatbox_ autopost.php on line 19"

it would be nice if there was a delete button in the box so that messages can be deleted without going to the admin panel

[arco]

Originally Posted by odonel

it would be nice if there was a delete button in the box so that messages can be deleted without going to the admin panel

There should be an X between the username and message you can click to delete messages.

[arco]

Originally Posted by 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

No change sorry.

But I think I'm on to something here. While looking through the "Advanced Internet Options" in IE7, I noticed this option: Enable native XMLHTTP support
It was enabled, so I turned it off. Now the first message entered appears as it should, but any message typed after that doesn't appear unless you do a full page refresh. I can also see that the chatbox does some kind of refresh at my set intervals, but the messages just doesn't appear.

[DementedMindz]

would be nice to have it so when a smiley is clicked it will auto close the popup of smilieys and another button to clear the text of the input incase they want to erase what they wrote in there kinda like vbshout but other then that so far looking good

[DementedMindz]

yeah I am seeing the error on internet explorer also. here is the error. well that is when you click the smilieys button.

also with refresh turned off in admincp and hide button turned off it refreshes the shout on the user who posted the messages screen but not on no one else's until they refresh the page so right now its pretty much a non ajax version the way it is..

Attachment 64109

[DementedMindz]

lol I erased 2 shouts when testing with internet explorer and firefox and when I hit the refresh button on the shoutbox they came back..

[jerseyda6]

how do I make the field bigger? I have many users using thin but it only allows to see about 3 shouts at a time... I would like to see at least 20 with out scrolling? Thanks