Chat Software

[rlodge]

I'm thinking about adding a chat program to my website and I'm not sure what software to use. The answer is probably "NO" but does anyone know of a chat program that's free and has some sort of video chat integrated or how to integrate video chat into a free, open source chat program?

Thanks

[DJHolliday]

That's a bit much. You really want to stress that poor server, don't you

For a chat, why not use IRC. One of the easiest is to use our jIRC or PJIRC Java Client for Microsoft Internet Explorer 4+/Netscape 4+ web browsers. There are several free IRC servers out there, you can open up your own channels. See a list of channels right here.

If you insist on Video Chat, you could put a "Skype-Me" button on your homepage and use that video chat option.

Both "solutions" have the advantage, to direct the traffic away from your shared server. People can chat with you and use their own tools (like ChatZilla, a Firefox Add-On for IRC)

It's nice to have a chat on the server, but just consider the bandwidth you would use.

[sunils]

Chatting is good option but as DJ said, it will increase the load on the server.

[rlodge]

Yeah....I thought of the server load after I posted. Does a regular chat program use a lot in the terms of resources? (I'm new to this if you haven't guessed.) I was looking at an SMF forum with AJAX chat integrated. I won't have a huge number of people on this because I intend to limit the users to co-workers.

[Smith6612]

If it's an AJAX shoutbox, it depends on which one it is. One of them that I know of is known to open up several instances of PHP instances. Like with my home web server which is still being used, one of the small forums I host for a friend, the admin had installed an AJAX shoutbox. Well, their members started to use it, and when I was working on the server and Google decided to hit the site, I saw one instance of PHP start up for Google and it worked fine, while a few seconds later, I saw 10 instances of PHP all open up at once just because of the shoutbox mod and because of Google just loading a single page, so 11x1 user is a lot for one page call, especially the fact that it has to talk to MySQL and run 20+ queries just for one thing as well. Geez.

[sunils]

Yeah....I thought of the server load after I posted. Does a regular chat program use a lot in the terms of resources? (I'm new to this if you haven't guessed.) I was looking at an SMF forum with AJAX chat integrated. I won't have a huge number of people on this because I intend to limit the users to co-workers.

If you are going to use ajax based chat system only among your co-workers then it is ok. It is a good option to communicate with the staffs.

[rlodge]

If it's an AJAX shoutbox, it depends on which one it is. One of them that I know of is known to open up several instances of PHP instances. Like with my home web server which is still being used, one of the small forums I host for a friend, the admin had installed an AJAX shoutbox. Well, their members started to use it, and when I was working on the server and Google decided to hit the site, I saw one instance of PHP start up for Google and it worked fine, while a few seconds later, I saw 10 instances of PHP all open up at once just because of the shoutbox mod and because of Google just loading a single page, so 11x1 user is a lot for one page call, especially the fact that it has to talk to MySQL and run 20+ queries just for one thing as well. Geez.

It wouldn't have been this (https://blueimp.net/ajax/) one, would it? I don't want to poke at the creators but I don't know that much about this. This program (Set up for review on a Wamp server on my PC) looked promising and integrated nicely with SMF. Once integrated it created a public area and an area linked to each of the boards on the forum and followed the permissions set for users in the forum. Just trying to make a "more informed" decision.

Thanks

[Mitch]

You can use Flashchat,
http://www.tufat.com/s_flash_chat_chatroom.htm


You can download it for free, if you want to fla files then you need to pay $5

[rlodge]

You can use Flashchat,
http://www.tufat.com/s_flash_chat_chatroom.htm


You can download it for free, if you want to fla files then you need to pay $5

Unfortunately it's not free anymore. As far as I can see, not even a limited demo download. Commercial license only. The only "trial" I saw was a demo on their site. It looked great but I would like to know how well it integrates with SMF.

I wouldn't be above the $5 for the .fla code if I got to try it first. Not that this site would do this but I've been taken too many times buying software that I couldn't test first only to find out it's not what was advertised. As an edit, I just noticed that this board uses a version of flashchat and every time I try to open it I get an error stating that if I continue to allow some script to run, my PC may become unstable or freeze.

[rlodge]

Thanks, I'll give that a try. I guess Google was not my friend!