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.

[da420]

Originally Posted by Quantnet.org

What the differences/con/pro of yours and MGC chat box ?
I'm considering one of the two.

Thanks

Both are excellent Chat Boxes, by very good coders. My suggestion to you would be to go over the feature list and compare them, and choose what seems most suitable for your needs. IMO, Dreams is a very lightweight solution with little overhead, very easy on the server resources. MGC's has more options and configurations. I had this mod installed on my board a couple months ago, and it was very good, but I was missing some of the options I really wanted, and that is when I switched over to MGC's. But, really, it's all up to your needs/wants/resources..

[Bakushan]

Im sorry im having trouble finding the navbar template on my server. Where is it located?

[Bakushan]

Got it! Once I get it to refresh quickly I will be up and running with over 8000 members! Thanks!!

[Bakushan]

Ok!!!

Working well on my forums!

http://www.ricekiller.com/forums/

Here is ONE problem! It does not auto refresh when you open the chat box separately! When you use the integrated box, it refreshes fine (every 5 seconds) but when you click the link to open the box, users complain that it does not auto refresh.

Any advice?

[Dream]

Hello, it should be working normally... If this is still not working, please enable the chatbox for guests to view it so I can check it out.

[Dream]

Originally Posted by Quantnet.org

What the differences/con/pro of yours and MGC chat box ?
I'm considering one of the two.

Thanks

As da420 pointed out, this (mine) chatbox is the more simple of the two. It just boils down if you need a bunch of a lot of features, or just a chatbox that works.

I'd like to point out too that my chatbox is a lot more easier to maintain for the coder, and is bound to give less errors and be easier to update on new versions of vBulletin.

MCG chatbox is great, but I wouldn't use it because my users wouldn't need all those features. It really boils down to what you would need on your website. Other than that I can't really say because I haven't used MGC's. Also what I know is that mine is easy to install/uninstall.

I'd suggest you install both in a test forum and go with the one you like best.

[Bakushan]

Originally Posted by Dream

Hello, it should be working normally... If this is still not working, please enable the chatbox for guests to view it so I can check it out.

Reset to work for guests (so you can check out your work if you like) also got it working a bit smoother.

Only thing I would like would be a way for it to auto delete older messages. (Either over x amount of hours or after x amount of messages)

Great work thanks for any help. :up:

[Dream]

You can use the script inside the cron directory with vBcron to do that, the instructions are in the txt file in the directory.

Ok I'll take a look at it now.

edit: is it still not refreshing in its own window?

[Bakushan]

Originally Posted by Dream

You can use the script inside the cron directory with vBcron to do that, the instructions are in the txt file in the directory.

Ok I'll take a look at it now.

edit: is it still not refreshing in its own window?

Thanks for quick response.

Yah it is refreshing everything fine now from what I can tell, I also setup the auto prune script to run once a day. Hopefully that will be fine in regards to lag/page load times. (If not I will just set it up to prune more often)

Great mod! Keep up the good work.

:up:

[RvG2]

hi just two questions:

how many queries it have?
is it server intensive? I am planning to change on your chatbox if it is not. this is my last and final choice i have.