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.

[wot-Mike]

Here's something that you may be looking for:
http://vbulletin.com/forum/showthrea...threadid=43174
look at the last post

[dgessler]

Originally posted by tweak
WEll On the Main index page Couldnt you make the CHAT POP UP??? is that possible? So they wouyld have a BOX opened and be free to surf the net.

Well on my site I just use the target=_blank feature in my link to let it popup in a new window, works fine.. :bunny:

ps. THANKS FOR THE HACK!!

It is working great on my forum, especially since the AfterNic Forums/Chat got taken down 2 days ago, we are trying to get old AN'ers to my board, I also got the pro version of the chat, it's awesome

[wot-Mike]

I'm using the blank thing as well. I showed that link, cause it's a beautiful way of linking to chat as well.

And thanks for the kind words

[dprice]

Installed this hack without any problems and was up and running in about 20 minutes!

Excellent work Mike!

Guess I have to get the ole credit card out and upgrade! Thanks again for the great work.

[dprice]

I have upgraded to the professional account and have went into the settings to give my moderators online administrator privledges.

I entered in the Forum name, left the password field blank, and checked online administrator.

BUT, when they log on, they dont have /ban /kick etc features. Is there a way around this?

[wot-Mike]

The auto-login feature doesn't really care about user accounts, so you can't login that way with any admin privileges. If you have admins set up without passwords, then please do assign passwords to their accounts to avoid mis-use.
auto-login works seperate from any user accounts.

There's an url to an admin thingy however. If you log in to your raidersoft account, then on the right you'll see the link. Just pass that link on to your fellow admins. They can login that admin thing using their account credentials and do whatever's necessary.

There's also an url their to the chat room via raidersoft's website. If you start it up from there, then you can login the "regular" way, with account credentials and such, but it's away from the forum.

[dprice]

Thanks for the update

Again, great hack!

[wot-Mike]

Small update:

This extra bit of code will allow Admins and SuperModerators to login to chat via their chat account credentials, and thus giving them admin control while in chat. You must ofcourse have accounts to log into (like the Professional chat in the case Raidersoft).

Every other forum member will still be logged in via auto-login. When an admin or supermoderator logs in, they get an invalid username warning, and can then log in manually.

Now, in chat.php find:

PHP Code:

eval("\$forumchat = \"".gettemplate("chatbit")."\";"); 


And before that, add this bit of code:

PHP Code:

if ($bbuserinfo['usergroupid'] != 5 AND $bbuserinfo['usergroupid'] != 6) {
        $username = '';
    } 


There's a better way, but this is the easiest one to do

[-=dm=-]

Hi wot-mike
This is cool hack
I have little problem, when I login the chat it say user name takken (Im the admin)

and also on bottum of the page I get errors (sometimes)
something like this:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 02:07:12 GMT Server: Apache/1.3.23 (Unix) mod_gzip/1.3.19.1a mod_bwlimited/1.0 PHP/4.1.2 mod_log_bytes/0.3 FrontPage/5.0.2.2510 mod_ssl/2.8.7 OpenSSL/0.9.6b X-Powered-By: PHP/4.1.2 Content-Encoding: gzip Content-Length: 1960 Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=99 Connection: Keep-Alive Content-Type: text/html (and much more)

I have the sigma free chat but Im going to get the pro version

[FWC]

Originally posted by wot-Mike
Every other forum member will still be logged in via auto-login. When an admin or supermoderator logs in, they get an invalid username warning, and can then log in manually.

Thanks for the idea wot-Mike. I did it a little differently. Only two of us are chat moderators, so I took:

PHP Code:

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


and changed it to:

PHP Code:

if ($bbuserinfo['userid'] == X or $bbuserinfo['userid'] == Y) {
    $username = '';
    } elseif ($myLength > 15) { 
    $username = substr( $username1, 0, 15 ); 
    } else { 
    $username = $username1; 
} 


I just substituted our userids for X and Y and it works great.