Instant message with friends online

[Zachariah Boren]

Something that facebook has. The option to instant message your friends that are on-line.

Something you can enable and disable per user, usergroup.

 

[erich37]

can we have a chatbox exactly the same as there is on Facebook ?

 

[James]

CometChat is an alternative you may want to explore.

 

[a legacy reborn]

http://www.arrowchat.com/, something I've been looking into because of what someone said in the cometchat thread on here .

 

[raytrails]

It would undermine the basic idea of a discussion forum, less postings would indicate a less active forum -- alas, less new members. We had a dialogue about this at one of my forums, and the idea of a chatbox was swiftly turned down.

 

[Marc]

I also wouldnt want something like this for the same reasons stated above

 

[Forsaken]

I agree with you on that one, this is the downside of having a chatbox.

If theres such a major downside, why would you still want one?

 

[Paul B]

My members would lynch me if I removed Chat.

It's used very sporadically most of the time, but during race sessions everyone jumps in to chat in real time.

The members themselves decided this is how they want to use it and it works great.

 

[a legacy reborn]

If you are not going to give your members a feature because of the risk then I assume that it would not bother your members knowing they don't have the feature, basically are they going to leave your forum for another in the same niche because it has a chatbox or do they not want it?

 

[Alpha1]

It would undermine the basic idea of a discussion forum, less postings would indicate a less active forum -- alas, less new members. We had a dialogue about this at one of my forums, and the idea of a chatbox was swiftly turned down.

It rather increases forum posting in my forums as they are information oriented. Chat is for casual chatting. If you are using your forums for that, then chat will distract from your forum.

CometChat is an alternative you may want to explore.

Cometchat has very nice features, but adds a lot of load and performance issues

http://www.arrowchat.com/, something I've been looking into because of what someone said in the cometchat thread on here .

Very well coded, but quite new and therefore misses a lot of integration functionality. But there are a lot of new features coming with version 1.1

 

[jmurrayhead]

regarding the Taiga-chat:
is it possible for users to chat privately, like 2 people can chat privately in a room? Or is Taiga-chat just like a shoutbox so everone can read the posts?

I am looking for something similar to facebook-chat. Is there any add-on available for XenForo?

Thanks!

Taiga Chat. It's not like facebook, though. http://xenforo.com/community/threads/taigachat-ajax-shoutbox.7339/

 

[Deepmartini]

What is the different between comet chat and arrow chat? They look the same to me. How can we tell if one is better coded than the other?

 

[Deepmartini]

Arrowchat has notifications for private messages, friend requests and wall post, Cometchat no.

Cometchat doesn't have any of these features? Wow I'm very surprised!!!!

 

[Panupat]

If you are not going to give your members a feature because of the risk then I assume that it would not bother your members knowing they don't have the feature, basically are they going to leave your forum for another in the same niche because it has a chatbox or do they not want it?

I used to installed ajax chat add on on my IPB. Afer that, 90% of my forum activities went into the chat. Rarely any new threads were made.

When I first thought about converting to Xenforo, I asked my members what they think if the new forum doesn't have chat. All of them went pretty crazy. Saying how much they want the chat and how they couldn't live without it.

Then, I converted. And I didn't give them the chat add on (yay). None of them complain... not even one. They seem perfectly happy with the new forum and now new posts and threads are being made.

And I am much much happier.

 

[jwiechers]

This feature is always a bit of a gamble. Chats, especially if they are as accessible as an AJAX chats, right there on the board, will usually influence posting frequencies quite substantially as people spend a lot of time on them. In a very social forum, that is certainly good, but it can (and usually does) lead to a marked decrease in threads and posts.

 

[adin]

If someone can help with a XenForo extension for envolve, it's really been very good for us on vB. It's a little pricey, compared to arrowchat/cometchat, but the seamless offloading has been outstanding.

And to contradict the poster above, we've had *increased* forum participation since making an 'easy' chat available...And our users stick around a *lot* longer. We just about had a riot when we had to temporarily dump envolve (for CometChat, Arrowchat didn't have a hosted service)...

At the end of the day, a 'footer bar' chat is now a requirement for our community. It really is one of those things that seems to separate forums from communities.

 

[adin]

Cometchat doesn't have any of these features? Wow I'm very surprised!!!!

We were surprised as well, ultimately these were major reasons we had to switch back to envolve.

 

[Deepmartini]

What's envolve?

 

[adin]

What's envolve?

hosted online chat, though it doesn't have a Xenforo plugin yet, something I'd *love* to see.

https://www.envolve.com/

 

[Deepmartini]

Just curious if anyone is using a chat solution or facebook style chat/friends bar on their site and if the current offerings out there have improved? I see that CometChat offers a service that takes care of the server load issues.

 

[Brent W]

xenForo should look into adding the Facebook like chat feature into the core product. It could simply be improving the current personal messaging system to be real time when both members are online. Showing that the member is currently online, showing that they are typing a message to you. Provide a dedicated way to open a window on the site for that chat discussion.

You do not have to include an actual chat room as Facebook does not do this. Just update xenForo personal messages to be more IM like when both users are online.

Edit: Only send emails alerting of new messages when you send a message to offline user. Would cut down on overall email sending from the website.