Shout Box / Chat

[Mokeli]

Ive noticed this has become a big deal , It would be alswome if there was a built in shout box , make it Ajax or something pro , it would still be nice. We have over 15 members online it would be nice if we could chat to spare time. Or There could be Shoutbox Mod addons . So we can edit it and make it more appealing with more features. And I think you should add a feature where you can take of the side bar and leave the stats at the bottom of the forums or make the forum text a little larger, Plus with description the forums would look bad.

Mokeli
Admin Junction Founder
Goodbless

 

[borbole]

The only scalable shoutbox i can think of is flash + sockets or java, an html + ajax shoutbox just isn't worth it. It's better as an addon also

Indeed. I agree as well. It would be better as an add on.

 

[Lycaon]

In a moment of madness... well one of many actually, I added a shout box to my forums.

What a waste of time, it never got used. After a month I un-installed it and will never install one again.

 

[Sage]

I'm surprised by the amount of "No" posts. Was the OP asking for a feature that cannot, under any circumstances, be turned off.. or am I missing something?

I think a built in shoutbox would be nice for the people who want to use it, and simply "somewhere in a box, in a closet, in a random house" for the people who don't.

 

[Onimua]

I'm surprised by the amount of "No" posts. Was the OP asking for a feature that cannot, under any circumstances, be turned off.. or am I missing something?

I think a built in shoutbox would be nice for the people who want to use it, and simply "somewhere in a box, in a closet, in a random house" for the people who don't.

The fact that it would be rarely, if at all used. The number of people who actually would use it on their site is so small there's no real point in making it a default feature, and any sites that do have it I can't see it being used for anything more than spam, and after a while no one would use it anyway.

Just saying "It can be turned off" isn't the greatest of reasons of why it should be implemented in the first place.

 

[Chromaniac]

you guys can easily add on this facebook component:

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/comments

that adds on the required functionality. no load on your server. no junk in your database.

it cannot get any simpler than that! (of course, i realize that it is not integrated with the forum and is not going to have same usernames and stuff like that. but in the end its a shoutbox for people to shout in. :| )

 

[Paul B]

The fact that it would be rarely, if at all used. The number of people who actually would use it on their site is so small there's no real point in making it a default feature, and any sites that do have it I can't see it being used for anything more than spam, and after a while no one would use it anyway.

Chat is used more heavily than the forum on a race day on my site.

In the 2 years it has been installed I have never seen a single spam message on there.

Making sweeping generalisations is a bit silly when you're way off the mark.

 

[Onimua]

Chat is used more heavily than the forum on a race day on my site.

In the 2 years it has been installed I have never seen a single spam message on there.

Making sweeping generalisations is a bit silly when you're way off the mark.

Sorry to have made a conclusion based on my experiences of having used and seen them. Glad it works for you.

 

[Andrés Durán]

If you wanna kill site performance, your server and lost activity in your forums, simply code a Shoutbox by yourself or pay someone to do it for you. Then you'll come back to this thread telling us "You were right"

 

[Chromaniac]

its true that a shoutbox results in less content added to your forum itself. that is an issue for some people at least.

 

[Lycaon]

its true that a shoutbox results in less content added to your forum itself. that is an issue for some people at least.

I think it depends on your forums niche and your members really.

 

[Chromaniac]

and that was the reason for the last part in that post.

that is an issue for some people at least.​

 

[dutchbb]

Don't like them, sorry. I would rather show a random post on index than a shout.

 

[Sador]

Have you considered to try RealChat? It is definitely more robust/efficient then a shoutbox.

Okay, it was posted a month ago, but it's still most likely the worst advice ever given on this forum. RealChat should not be used by anyone. No support, nearly unlimited amount of bugs, bans that aren't stored anywhere and keep disappearing, no regular way to edit even the slightest of things (actually editing the smiley codes is nearly impossible... literally, because of the weird way RealChat handles stuff..) Don't ever use it.

 

[Floren]

Thanks for the info. I saw it installed on dnforum.com and the owner was very happy with it, no issues that you mentioned above.

 

["Mark"]

Shoutboxes are a threat to any database

Actually, shoutboxes/chats are very light on the database (if done correctly). You basically have two queries: a simple insert query, and a simple select query with a limit. And the select query is cacheable with the query cache in the database, as long as no new messages have been posted (a smart program that checks for new messages when posting a message will check before doing the insert so as not to invalidate the query cache. If an archive of messages isn't important, the table can be converted to a memory type, which is even faster/lighter (just make sure to truncate old messages!).

Where chat programs are heavy is on PHP, since the chat program will call a PHP script every second or so to see if there are any new messages. And if you're not using a PHP opcode cache, you're begging for server death.

Furthermore, I've seen some chat programs do things in clueless ways. For instance, AJAX Chat didn't put the correct indexes on the database tables the last time I installed it.

 

[Dream]

Shoutboxes are a threat to any database

Depends on the refresh rate. I'm all for a chatbox built on the core, my members always love to use that.

 

[HydraulicJack]

Maybe MGC at vbulletin.org will be willing to port over theirs.

 

[Crazyfruitbat]

I have a chatbox on my forum, though it is limited to only being open on Friday evenings so that people can say 'anyone want to race on the PS3' etc, that way it doesn't kill the forum but the user also gets some chat time too. I did experiment with having the box open for a week and indeed post values went through the floor.

and this is most certainly an add-on

 

[Alice]

I hate shoutboxes, they make me feel pressured to reply to people and people never give me enough time to reply, I tended to just keep seeing shouts saying things like "HELLO, are you there or what", as an add-on this could have merit, if it gets built-in I want to be able to turn it off.

 

[Princeton]

Oh no ... we don't need a shout box

It's just crazy - I never understood what people see in them