Web based chat and shout boxes.
I’m a strong advocate of chatting and texting on the internet. One of the first things I ever used the internet for was chatting on the irc.undernet back when it was popular and the place to be.
These days there are many different chat options.
Every website should probably have some place that users can communicate in a real time manner.
Here are some of the solutions I’ve found or have dealt with lately when trying to find the perfect solution to website(s) I’m working on.
Chatango
Probably the easiest chat program to add to your website with the most features.
Advantages:
- It’s easy to add to your website.
- Has excellent moderation abilities.
- Easy to customize.
- Some popular websites use it.
Disadvantages:
- Authentication is handled by chatango.
Light IRC .
It allows you to use the existing IRC servers and put your users in popular channels.
It’s a very interesting solution and could be used to draw traffic to your site as well as providing a place
for people to chat. The only major downside I’ve seen so far is that it generates an error message when
navigating away from a page that sounds like it was exploiting some security hole in IE.
Advantages:
- Works with IRC
- Very customizable.
- Authentication is customizable.
- Create your own custom channels or put your users into existing channels.
- You can purchase a full solution.
Disadvantages:
- Uses IRC protocol so chat isn’t remembered between page reloads.
- Possible javascript exploit in older browsers.
- Runs off their server but you can purchase a better solution if needed.
Ajaxdaddy.com Shout Box
I ended up using this solution since I could tailor it to my needs.
I found 1 or 2 bugs to fix and that was it. It worked how I needed it to.
I wasn’t looking for the “ultimate” solution just something that would work with my websites authentication and did what I needed it to do. Even so I still had to put a bit of work into this.
Advantages:
- It’s a shout box. It does what it needs to do well.
Disadvantages:
- Requires more work to get working.
- Has fewer features then most chats.
- Bug 1: It caches data on IE. Add a random # or date to the jquery getJSON call
- Bug 2: Times were incorrect 19:02:05 would show up as 19:2:5.
Once I fixed those two bugs I was pretty happy with the solution.
There are still a few minor things to fix as well but overall I’m happy with ajaxdaddy shoutbox.
