Thread

Hello all, what is the latest and greatest way (if any) to achieve the following most easily:

- allow EE members to chat in a chatroom app which feels like the rest of the site
- integrate EE with said chat app such that people are ‘logged in’ to the chat app when they log in to the site
- restrict chat app access only to certain member groups (those with subscriptions)

Has anyone successfully done or seen this kind of integration? I’d like to implement it as currently we’re using a single thread in the forum as a chatroom basically (many posts per hour to this thread), and this treating the thread as a chatroom is quickly becoming messy and untenable.

Thanks all you EE masters for making my life far easier than it would be without your powerful software and insight.

TIA

I would be interested in this as well.  Anyone have ideas?

I’m jumping on the bandwagon, I would love this information too.  Anyone???

I’m not aware of anything that works for this, but it would be absolutely perfect for my needs right now.

Instead I am using phpMyChat (https://sourceforge.net/svn/?group_id=19371), in an iframe on the rest of the site.

Members have to register a second time, unfortunately, but because it’s framed, it looks like it belongs on the site.

Good luck, and if you find anything, please post to this thread so we are notified, I’d hop on that bandwagon!

I’m looking into integrating Blab: http://hot-things.net/

Looks like they support integration with EE.

I’m talking to the guys who do Blab and might be integrating it soon into a website - it’ll be a members only chat if it integrates well, but I’ll let everyone know the experience and how it works.

Hi there smeg,

Please do keep us informed of how well the integration goes if you decide upon doing this as that chat script does seem quite nice. Would like to know how easy it is to integrate with EE. From what I see about the way they talk about it then it won’t actually touch your EE installation and literally just works alongside it which would be really great.

Looks like quite a nice little chat app all in all.

Best wishes,

Mark

I asked them if they had any examples of it running with EE - as for me the biggest selling point is integration.

They do not, but did describe the integration process (briefly, anyway)

the integration is very easy - you need to install BlaB in the EE database and in a folder where cookies set by EE are readable. then you need to set some variables in blab/config.php [EE’s table prefix, session cookie] - that’s all.

I’m not sure how this sounds - easy? This is an expensive solution (http://hot-things.net/po/blab.php), but if it works as advertised, looks very promising.

Doesn’t sound too bad. A lot of the other chat scripts out there require you to hack your system to get them working but it just seems as though you are adding in some separate (hopefully) database tables in the ExpressionEngine database which shouldn’t (again hopefully) mess anything up and then a few config values which all chat scripts need to get them working so not really all that much.

Would be nice if they had one to show though and maybe screen-shots of the entire process. If it could work with the core version then I don’t see why they don’t just download it (EE Core) and install it so that people can see it working. A definite selling point for them there methinks?!!! 😉

Best wishes,

Mark

It doesn’t sound like they focus on EE, they integrate with a whole bunch of stuff too.

I’ll update when I get somewhere with them and the software!

http://www.prochatrooms.com/demo.php
http://demo.chat.pcpin.com/
https://blueimp.net/ajax/

I assume they are both examples of Pro Chat Rooms?

http://www.prochatrooms.com/

Nothing there indicates out of the box Expression Engine support - are you indicating it does have such support?

I just saw the update for Ajax Chat - Do you know how to integrate into EE’s profile management?

Blab chat should be setting me up with a copy of their software, integrated into EE, by 10am GMT tomorrow. I’ll let everyone know how it ends up working for me!

Does anyone have experience with the chat applications mentioned above? They look like they *could* do the job, and are cheaper than Blab (one being free), but again, I’m not getting much in the way of good info on the subject.

Update on this.

This morning, the folks at Blab logged in and installed the Blab software, integrated it into the EE members module and we’re up and running.

It works very smoothly - As long as you are already logged into EE, when you launch blab, you log right into it with no user screens, and your screen name shows in chat. It will even pull in your profile BIO. I’m asking them if it can pull in the avatar / profile photo also 😊

editing the php files allows me to promote users to moderator and administrator status based on their EE user ID.

there is one problem I’m just emailed them about - the entry line seems to be restricted to only a hundred or so characters, which when you have lots of people in a chat room could easily be exceeded - I’m looking for ways to increase this when the Blab guys come back online (they are in Europe, I’m EST).

So far, color me very impressed with the software and the support from the team. they are letting me run the application for a couple of weeks, then the non profit will decide if it meets their needs and pay for it. The biggest hurdle for me was EE integration and it does that very smoothly.

If you would like a look, I have a test EE users for it - email or private message me, and I’ll share the URL with you privately.

I’m having Blab setup as well.  Everything seems to work well so far. 
I am also inquiring about bringing over Profile and Avatar info.