Cometchat, Arochat, etc

[shawn]

I have created a usergroup who can see/access Cometchat and members have to ask to be put in this group

We've been using Arrowchat for a while. Originally, it was only available for premium members. But we had a problem with a very few specific users where the chat would cause extremely long (as in minutes) load times. Disable the chat, no problem. As best I could figure, it was a browser issue, but I couldn't ever nail it down to a specific browser or build.

So we used Waindigo's Joinable Usergroups add-on to do basically what you're talking about. Users opt-in to chat access by joining a special user group.

 

[coryb2007]

Skysa looks good. I checked out Envolve but it's really basic - no filesharing etc.
Not sure I like the Skysa bar though. I'd rather have just a link.
How do you integrate Skysa with XF?

The most I found was this:

<script type="text/javascript">
var _SKYAUTH = {
loginUrl:'REPLACE',
memberNick:'REPLACE WITH CONTEXT CODE TO GET MEMBER USER NAME',
memberId:'REPLACE WITH CONTEXT CODE TO GET MEMBER ID',
profileUrl:'REPLACE WITH MEMBER PROFILE URL',
photoUrl:'REPLACE WITH MEMBER PHOTO URL'
};
</script>

I am fairly new to coding for Xenforo but if someone could help fill in the blanks it would help everyone on installing or making Skysa work with Xenforo.

 

[Solari]

I am using cometchat on my site, and have been encountering many issues so far. If you plan to use their cometchat service ($9-$99 per month) then most issues are resolved.You will need this even if you only have 2 people in your chat. Displaying the bar to guests (without giving them chat functionality) will bring down your website unless you pay for their service.
There is no usergroup permissions, which is a massive issue.
Therefore there also is no special access for subscribers and also no log access to moderators.
Users can not be in more than 1 room and keep hopping from room to room.
These issues will likely be addressed in the future.

Cometchat has many more functions than Arrowchat. CC keeps releasing new stuff which is great.
Arrowchat has few functions and very little development. But Arrowchat is coded very well.

I spoke with CometChat and they said they can set up usergroup permissions if you purchase their premium or higher level product. Just an FYI.

Ray

 

[Alpha1]

Yeah, sort of. I did purchase that $500 platinum package and also another 500 in custom development. At the time of writing that post (march) they were unresponsive and did not provide the promised functionality.
However, later they did become responsive. To their defence I must say that I left it at that for the time being because I am moving from vb to xf.
Unfortunately, the functionality still does not exist.

 

[Martok]

I use Arrowchat and it easy to set it so that only certain usergroups can use it by using a conditional statement in the PAGE_CONTAINER template. I would imagine that you could do the same with CometChat.

 

[Alpha1]

Thats not usergroup conditions. Thats only hiding it from display while it loads in the page. And even then it will show on login. I currently have it set up that way. I have a lot of members who have found out how easy it is to circumvent this.
Plus there is a mobile chatbox which you can not hide. Users can just go there.
What's worse is that if you have a staff chat hidden away from other users then its possible for anyone to find out whats in there. There is a function for password protection of chat rooms but that doesn't really work well in version 4. Members need to login on every page load, so that quickly demotivates anyone from using password protected chat rooms.

I will revisit cometchat again after i have migrated to xenforo. I hope that my experience with Cometchat 5.1 + XenForo is much better than CometChat 4.6 + vbulletin. CC5.1 has performance improvements which I hopes solves the issues that it currently gives on my big board. So far CometChat has advised to use a dedicated server or their expensive cometservice for the chat service if you have more than a handful users on chat. For this reason I needed to severely limit chat functions to only a few usergroups.

 

[Martok]

Thats not usergroup conditions. Thats only hiding it from display while it loads in the page. And even then it will show on login. I currently have it set up that way. I have a lot of members who have found out how easy it is to circumvent this.
Plus there is a mobile chatbox which you can not hide. Users can just go there.
What's worse is that if you have a staff chat hidden away from other users then its possible for anyone to find out whats in there. There is a function for password protection of chat rooms but that doesn't really work well in version 4. Members need to login on every page load, so that quickly demotivates anyone from using password protected chat rooms.

This is the conditional I use

<xen:if is="{xen:helper ismemberof, $visitor, 7} OR {$visitor.is_admin} OR {$visitor.is_moderator}">
ARROWCHAT CODE HERE
</xen:if>

So how exactly are you able to circumvent that? Because if you reckon you can do this, then various other resources on this site can also be circumvented.

As for mobile chat on ArrowChat, this code also works.

 

[Maria Powel]

I have changed the code in cometchat so that on ly certain user group can have access to cometchat.

Any one interested mail me here romeosameul@gmail.com

 

[Alpha1]

This is the conditional I use

<xen:if is="{xen:helper ismemberof, $visitor, 7} OR {$visitor.is_admin} OR {$visitor.is_moderator}">
ARROWCHAT CODE HERE
</xen:if>

So how exactly are you able to circumvent that? Because if you reckon you can do this, then various other resources on this site can also be circumvented.

As for mobile chat on ArrowChat, this code also works.

What cometchat code do you place there? Do you wrap this around the javascript in the header as well? The javascript is loaded in the header. CC instructs to use hide the bar with the conditional, but the javascript is already loaded. I have not tried this with xenforo yet, but on vbulletin and on the various addons I run this means that the chat bar is loaded on log-in. This can be exploited by stopping the page from loading. Then the chat bar can be used by usergroups that do not have permission.
A second way to exploit the lack of usergroup permissions is to find the /cometchat directory and access that directly.
A third way to exploit this is to access your cometchat network directly.
A fourth way to exploit this is to download the mobile app from the Android market or the iPhone version from the Appstore.

 

[Martok]

What cometchat code do you place there? Do you wrap this around the javascript in the header as well? The javascript is loaded in the header. CC instructs to use hide the bar with the conditional, but the javascript is already loaded. I have not tried this with xenforo yet, but on vbulletin and on the various addons I run this means that the chat bar is loaded on log-in. This can be exploited by stopping the page from loading. Then the chat bar can be used by usergroups that do not have permission.
A second way to exploit the lack of usergroup permissions is to find the /cometchat directory and access that directly.
A third way to exploit this is to access your cometchat network directly.
A fourth way to exploit this is to download the mobile app from the Android market or the iPhone version from the Appstore.

I don't know what Cometchat goes there - as I said, I use Arrowchat.

None of those exploits will work on Arrowchat.