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[DragonByte] xFShout [AJAX]

Belazor

Active member
DragonByte Technologies are proud to present xFShout v1: The most advanced, Most feature-rich and most professional shoutbox ever.

xfshout.webp

Why xFShout?

The two owners of Dragonbyte Technologies have a combined experience of over a decade producing, designing and coding vBulletin modifications. We have decided to take this expertise and apply it towards XenForo development.

As usual we love giving back to the people who support us, which is why we are once again releasing a completely FREE version of our signature Shoutbox which has received great feedback on other platforms, and has more & better features than all our competitors. For them this is a hobby – For us, it's our livelihood.

The initial version of xFShout is a culmination of all we've learned over the years of developing vBShout, which is presented in a smooth, yet lightweight package that incorporates a feature that's unique to our shoutbox: Shoutbox Instances.

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Major Features

Advanced Shout Control: You have the ability to post shouts, edit your shouts, insert /Me commands, insert smilies, Bbcode, change font, text colour etc.

Advanced Staff Control: Give your staff members customised permissions to allow them to do certain actions, on all or selected instances and chat rooms. Permissions include: Banning users, editing user shouts, Creating/Editing "Sticky Notices", Pruning shouts and much more.

Resource Optimisation: xFShout stores each shout in two ways; parsed and "raw". The benefit of this is a massive resource savings when loading the list of shouts; your server does not need to spend additional resources on parsing dozens of shouts each AJAX load.

Custom Shoutbox Instances: Ever wanted a separate shoutbox just for your admin forum? Got a part of your board only for VIP members? Now you can set a shoutbox specific to those areas.

Logging: Worried about staff members pruning the shoutbox to cover their tracks? Don't worry, with our advanced logging options, you can make sure a hard copy is kept of every action taken.

Easy Shoutbox Notice Editing: You and usergroups with the "Can Set Sticky" permission can now edit the notice by double-clicking the Sticky in the shoutbox. Quickly fix typos or rapidly update with new turn of events, editing it is never more than two clicks away.

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Upcoming Features
  • Archive
  • Advanced Optimisation Protocol
  • New Post / New Thread Notifications
  • Shoutbox Tabs
  • Private Messaging
  • Active Users Shout-bit
  • Chat Rooms within instances
  • Shoutbox Sounds
  • Admin Log Viewer
  • Admin Banned Users List
  • Admin Log / Archive Downloading
  • Easier access to common actions (Ban / Unban, View Profile, etc)
  • Idle Timeout
  • Auto-Idle Usergroup setting
These will be added over time, in no particular order, based on your feedback.

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F.A.Q.
  • Q: Does this go in the Sidebar?
  • A: Not currently, no. We may look into adding it into the Sidebar if there's enough demand for it, but with the expanded set of controls we intend to bring out, it would look highly cluttered.
  • Q: What are the available slash commands?
  • A: Check the Readme file for a complete list of currently available slash commands.
  • Q: Server load went up by over 9000. What gives?
  • A: This is a common problem with AJAX-based shoutboxes. Please try increasing the Refresh Time setting in Admin Control Panel -> Applications -> [DBTech] xFShout -> Manage Instances -> <click>. Increase it in increments of 5.
    If that doesn't solve it for you, then unfortunately there's nothing we can do until we've re-implemented some of vBShout's resource saving technology.
  • Q: My forum is broken now. There's a weird error and I can't access any front-end page. Help.
  • A: Please try going to Admin Control Panel -> Applications -> [DBTech] xFShout -> Manage Instances -> <click> -> Save and see if that solves it for you. If not, please post the complete error message here and we will help you out.
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We hope you enjoy this release from DragonByte-Tech!
 

Attachments

A couple of questions...
  1. Where on the forum does the shoutbox sit?
  2. Is it just for forumhome, or all pages?
 
1. Anywhere you want, the readme file specifies above the node list as a starting point.

2. I believe I've made it available for every possible template, though it's obviously impossible to literally test all of them xD
 
It's not something I'll ever use but I see a lot of work and thought have gone into this add-on so for that well done and nice work.

Can smilies be used I never seen any in the screenshot?
 
Nice work :)
Already got it installed on my test forum.

A couple of points though if I may.

Are the BB Code buttons going to be exposed? Or is it simply a case of typing them out manually?
The text entry window is at the bottom but messages are inserted top down. That seems backwards to me. Any chance of an ACP option to move it to the top?
The refresh countdown will get annoying after a while. Any chance that can be ACP selectable too?
 
If the messages are inserted at the bottom, can the order of appearance be reversed to the bottom as well? I don't like the messages appearing at the top.
 
Messages appear on the top, there's no reversing order currently because that's one of the more problematic features on vBShout, so we need to find alternative solutions before re-implementing it.
 
Messages appear on the top, there's no reversing order currently because that's one of the more problematic features on vBShout, so we need to find alternative solutions before re-implementing it.
Ah that's too bad. I'll wait to install it after this is fixed.
 
Would definitely want to see a demo of this in action. Currently, we are using the first shoutbox released as an add-on for xF and it's working great for us. But, if this one has more features (along with the ones the other has) then we may consider.
 
I currently have both installed on my test forum.

TaigaChat looks better and has a standalone page, as well as sidebar options.
It also handles image zooming and thumbnails very nicely.

This one has very good features such as sticky posts and double click editing.
However, there is no standalone page, the messages are reversed and there is a permanent refresh countdown displayed.

Currently I prefer TaigaChat but I will be watching both add-ons closely to see how they develop.
Whichever one introduces some sort of editor/BB Code buttons will be the one I ultimately go for.

Excellent job by both developers though :)
 
TaigaChat looks better and has a standalone page, as well as sidebar options.
It also handles image zooming and thumbnails very nicely.
We plan to do something similar (unsure about sidebar, depending on other feedback) in the future :)

However, there is no standalone page, the messages are reversed and there is a permanent refresh countdown displayed.
The refresh counter is a good visual tool for users in our opinion, so if we were to create options for this it'd be on a per-user basis :)

Whichever one introduces some sort of editor/BB Code buttons will be the one I ultimately go for.
xFShout will have BBCode buttons for permanently styling your shouts just like vBShout has atm :)
This is one of the reasons why we're iffy about a sidebar version ;p
 
I don't know how vBShout looks/works as I've never used chat on a vB forum.

Personally I don't use chat in the sidebar as it's too narrow for YouTube, etc. so a standalone page is fine for my needs.

I don't agree on the refresh though.
I've been using chat on my site for 3 years and everyone knows there is a slight (5 seconds) delay for the window refreshing.
I've only been using yours for a few hours and that countdown is already annoying (sorry) so it would be a showstopper for me.

Which will be a shame if/when you do get the BB Code buttons working.

Please don't think I'm criticising, I'm just giving my feedback.
As I said, it's an excellent add-on and I hope to be able to use it in the future.
 
Don't worry, I know it's just feedback :)

But a per-user option would satisfy each user's personal tastes more so than a global admin option would, because your users might like the information :)
 
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