Integration with vBulletin - FlashChat - Who is in the chat.

This modification is no longer available or supported.

This is a simple display of who is currently chatting in FlashChat - on the forum homepage display.

The main features of Version 4.xx are basically the same as previous versions ;

1. It displays the list on Forum Home with the "Users online" display.
2. The list view is collapsable, so you see just the number.
3. Users who should display as coloured or bold etc are displayed correctly (based on the display usergroup)
4. If you 'hover' over a username it will show the room they are chatting in and their status (away etc).
5. If the chat is empty, a simple "no one is chatting" message is displayed.
6. The hack is now phrased.
7. The ability to turn it on/off is in the ACP Forum Home Options.
8. The ability to allow only certain usergroups to view the list is an ACP option.
9. The location of the flashchat folder is now an ACP option (vBulletin Options > Forums Home Page Options).

Unzip the XML and import into vB using the ACP Product Manager.

To upgrade from version 4.10 onwards, you need to re-import the product with the overwrite option set to yes. To upgrade from version 4.02 to version 4.10 onwards, you need to uninstall the product and remove the template code in FORUMHOME - then upload the new product. To upgrade from version 3.xx to version 4.xx you need to delete the existing plugin and remove the template code in FORUMHOME - then upload the new product.

* An add-on to display a 'Most ever chatters' count is available here.


Note: This hack cannot display any bots in the chat, due to the strange way that flashchat stores this information. Please also note that I am not Tufat.com or anything to do with the Flashchat product - if you have questions about Flashchat in general, their forums are here.


History:

v4.10 : Removed the need to edit the FORUMHOME template.
v4.11 : Hyperlinked display icon to chat page. Added vb number formatting to count.
v4.12 : Added ALT tag to above hyperlink.
v4.13 : Updated ACP view permission option to take into account secondary groups.
v4.14 : Added 'nofollow' attribute to listed usernames.
v4.15 : Restricted list based on flashchat autologout parameter, to get round the issue of connections not being cleaned up.
v4.16 : Minor changes, no update necessary.
v4.17 : Added members status to hover information.
v4.18 : Re-wrote status code to take account of custom status definitions.

[OrangeFlea]

Is it possible to add the number of people in chat on the navbar, next to the chat link? I want the number to be viewable, while this forces the members on the board I'm with to scroll down to get the info.

Something like this: User CP Member List Chat (2)

[Paul M]

Most things are possible, but it would be a sperate hack.

[Ville]

Hi Paul, I just installed your vB 3.5 integration module (after upgrading to vB 3.5.0 gold yesterday). FlashChat works now better—before your version of the CMS module the FlashChat interface would not come up.

But now the users are still not able to log in. I am, since I'm the admin (on vB), but the users are returned back to FlashChat's login prompt ("wrong password or user name.. try again"). Since your version of the CMS module was for 3.5.0 beta, I wonder if something changed sufficiently between the beta through RCs, and finally gold, or whether there's something else up.

Thanks!

[Paul M]

Nope, the CMS works fine with any 3.5.0 version (beta 1 to gold) so you must have a problem somewhere, are you using the standard usergroup 2 or a custom usergroup for the users ?

[Ville]

Yep, indeed! Most of the "regulars" on my board are in a non-standard user group (called, in fact, "regulars"). Those were the people who were having problems (they were banned). Once I edited your CMS file and added the appropriate user group to the allowed list, that problem was solved.

Secondly, I currently don't use unicode for storing user names in vB, yet I initially was testing the access with a user name that contained an umlauted character ('?'). vBulletin allows such characters to be used even though unicode is not on, but apparently ASCII encoding of such characters confused FlashChat login. I need to look into converting user names into unicode so that any new user who will pick a user name containing an umlauted character will also be able to access FlashChat.

In any case, thanks for the updated CMS file!!

[Ville]

I just figured out why the users with usernames with umlauts weren't able to login. My stock configuration of vBulletin 3.5.0 allows users to select usernames with "scandinavian" characters (?,?,?) which are part of the extended ASCII set. Thus the usernames are not encoded as Unicode in the database. However, logins with usernames containing such characters were failing.

When I disabled the following line in your vbulletin35CMS.php, the problem went away:

    $login = utf8_to_entities($login);

Otherwise the 3.5.0 integration is working great!

[dsotmoon]

installed, thanks!

[OrangeFlea]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Most things are possible, but it would be a sperate hack.

What would make it so difficult? The number is originally displayed at the bottom. That itself can remain there, but I also want that number next to the chat link on the navbar.

[Paul M]

The navbar is called on every page, this hack is not, the number is only available on the forum homepage - btw, I don't recall saying it was difficult, just seperate.

[OrangeFlea]

Hopefully someone can build it, then. It's a common feature practiced by the EZboards, and it makes sense. A member could be browsing in other areas of the forum, like the arcade, journal, or quiz areas, and never know that there are people in the chat room. They'd have to go back to the main page and possibly scroll all the way down to the bottom of the forum listing in order to see the number of users in chat.