Online Web Chat Software?

frooyo asks: "I have been looking for sometime now to add the functionality of web chat to my website. I have been having difficulty in finding free (open source) software that allows for a moderator and N number of registered users to chat on my website. These projects look promising, but we'd like to know what others are out there. What do you use on your website for web chatting?"

Comments

How do I put chat rooms on my web pages?

[vasqzr]

Welcome to 1996!

Next up:

MIDI music
Flash
Annoying Cursors
VBScript
Useless Java Applets!

Re:How do I put chat rooms on my web pages?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot MathML.

FLAME OHOY!

Re:How do I put chat rooms on my web pages?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Useless Java Applet" is redundant ;-)

Re:How do I put chat rooms on my web pages?

[BTWR]

also...
Frames
Animated GIFs
full-color jpgs as backgrounds so that seeing the text is impossible
What's a web page? Is that one of those "cyber" do-hickeys?

Re:How do I put chat rooms on my web pages?

[inkedmn]

the only thing worse than a jpg background on a page is a *tiled* jpg background on a page (and invariably it's some candid of Johnny Depp or a picture of somebody's dog wearing a sweater and mittens or something...)

It all depends.

[Anonymous Coward]

On what functionalities you want. Probably one of the most full featured would be the Ethereal Realms., although, it's probably far beyond what you need/ want (and system intensive, from what I've heard from people running it).

It's more of a chat system, than simply a chat room.

Code http://sourceforge.net/projects/ethereal-realms/
Website: http://ethereal-realms.org

And yes, it's released under the GPL

IRC

[jalet]

Why don't you install Dancer+Dancer-Services and then the EIRC java applet ?

Works like a charm.

Re:IRC

[robochan]

IRC is definitely a good way to go. I use IRC and a web based client myself, and you don't even _need_ to run your own IRC daemon either. A channel can be set up on any public network, and you can almost always point the web based clients there.
Clients/daemons are only a sourceforge/freshmeat search away...

If...

[hookedup]

You've got no problems with using php/mysql for this, check out hotscripts.com php section. Lots of free (GPL) scripts there for you to try out.

Re:If...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhhh, GPL isent exactly free.........

Re:If...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not exactly an idiot...but you're pretty damn close.

Voice Software

[X00M]

Whatever happened to free voice chat software, where multiple people could talk in a chat environment?

Xoom

Re:Voice Software

[neur0maniak]

you mean, like TeamSpeak? Comes in handy for gaming, could be used as a general purpose voice chat server...

CGIIRC

[FinestLittleSpace]

http://cgiirc.sourceforge.net/ is a brilliant IRC > web client, and is massivley customisable, as well as having a very very helpful creator/developer who'll respond to your needs. Try it.

Re:CGIIRC

[Cy Guy]

CGIIRC is a great little ap, its offers a choice of interfaces including a mIRC like client option, and seems to have the ability to let users connect to an IRC server via port 80 connection while NOT requiring configuring proxy servers. Great if you have users trying to connect from behind firewalls.

It supports user accounts and passwords so authentication shouldn't be a problem, and your more sohpisticated users have a nearly endless choice of other IRC clients to use to connect to your server.

You would still need to configure an IRC server, but if you can't find an Open Source one you like, you probably aren't trying very hard.

Re:CGIIRC

[robochan]

>CGIIRC is a great little ap

That it is - I use it myself. However, I often see people searching out cgiirc login pages via google and elsewhere(in my web server logs). Is there some sort of exploit/spoof available for it that's making the rounds? I haven't seen anything on any of the mailing lists, but that doesn'tmean something's not out there.

Re:CGIIRC

[Cy Guy]

As was noted, you have a lot of power to configure it to meet your needs. One option is to specify the IRC server/s it connects to, that option can also be left open to allow it to connect to any IRC server. So likely people are looking for those unconfigured copies running out in the open on the net so they can connect to a third party server.

chat systems

[Eric'sGoddess]

Personally, I use Aerial Chat(configured on my site: http://www.cataromance.com/chat/xindex.php -- the project: http://freshmeat.net/projects/aerialchat/). It's the one I settled on after trying out at least a dozen others. The problem that I've found is either they're difficult to set up or they don't work on everyone's computer. This one has a safe mode for older browsers. What I'd really like to see in a chat is the ability to moderate the chat when we have a guest speaker. Still waiting for that option. If anyone knows of a good one, let me know! :)

Try Voodoo Chat

[Hollinger]

Go look at Voodoo Chat. I know of several sites that run it. It allows for moderators, kicking / banning users, and user profiles. It works pretty well, IMHO.

MCH

PHPMyChat

[jptechnical]

PHpMyChat comes with CPanel which is an extremely popular web hosting management package, so you might have it available and not even know it. PHPMyChat is also freely available and totally customizeable. After editing the css files I was able to make the window very small and nearly borderless so it is very lowkey for my wife whose boss treats all the employees like children.

You can create users and private rooms and and all kinds of other stuff. Just type /help for a popup window with commands and instructions.

HTTP is just not a good chat protocol.

[mellon]

HTTP is a really lousy transport for a bidirectional chat. It's really a question-and-response protocol, and things that speak it generally follow that way of doing things. So when you try to chat over HTTP, you wind up having to have some kind of timeout mechanism that refetches the web page every second in order to get decent interactivity, and it still provides a lousy user experience.

I would recommend instead that you go with the Jabber protocol, which is a much better choice for chatting. Nice, friendly, free clients are available for all popular operating systems. If you really want it to look webbish, you can always use a java web app that speaks jabber. This should give you a much nicer user experience.

Re:HTTP is just not a good chat protocol.

[Anonymous Coward]

you wind up having to have some kind of timeout mechanism that refetches the web page every second in order to get decent interactivity
----------------
That's just in a theory. In practice, a lot of browsers (IE>2, NN, Mozilla, Opera>6, Konqueror, even links) support 'stream'-mode (actually, it's just a html-rendering during downloading). So user connects to the server and than retrieves new content (f.e. new chat-messages) without any refreshes. Server just doesn't close a connection but writes new content in it. Not in RFC, but works :)
sorry for my english

Re:HTTP is just not a good chat protocol.

[Joe U]

Actually, I keep the connection open to the user and then force a refresh after a new message or x seconds have elapsed. (Javascript push/pull) Netscape used to support a pure 'server push' but nothing else did, so I had to resort to this push-pull.

http://keeptalking.com
Web Chat Software

webchat sucks

[ameoba]

Webchat interfaces suck. If you use a web-based IRC client to connect to a private IRC server, people who want a non-braindead interface can connect with a real, stand-alone, client.

I wrote a crappy one....

[titaniam]

When I needed a chat program, I just wrote one that uses a continuous html output. When you view the page the program gives you the latest comments, then hangs until more comments are added by someone else. Then it writes the output over the still open connection and hangs again... The program dies upon prolonged inactivity or if the same ip address requests the page again. When you submit a comment, a new page view gives you what you just entered and anything else typed in by others. I really fear for my webserver by posting this link (due to the way I implemented the chat, it is not good for large numbers of users at once), so it will "disappear" temporarily if trouble ensues: My chat program. Let me know if you like it, and I'll pass you the code, written in Perl. It is very minimalistic, but intended to be at least viewable on any browser that can show a page before the whole document is loaded. No download of software, such as the latest java version (and short simple code) is a big plus.

Slashcode?

[Feztaa]

You could use Slashcode, IIRC they have a half-decent demo of it in production.

Just bought a web chat piece of software...

[DeionXxX]

Its not Open-Source as in Free but it is the closest one could come. It costs just $5 and the author gives you all the source code and flash files. It is built on MySQL/PHP/Flash 6. It is ready outta the box and can be customized to the nth degree.

Here's the link: http://www.tufat.com/chat.php

--D3X
NeoX3.com: The Only Truly Free Pr0n Movie site (and I really mean Movies, not just 'Clips')

Use Javascript Remote Scripting (no reloading!)

[starvingartist12]

You should check out Brent Ashley's work with Javascript Remote Scripting (ie: "getting information from the server without refreshing the page")

a client-side javascript library which uses Dynamic HTML elements to make hidden remote procedure calls to the server. It only works asynchronously, but is known to work on Win9x, WinNT/2000, WinXP, Unix/Linux/BSD, and Mac with IE4+, NS4.x, NS6.x, Mozilla, Opera7 and Galeon.

There use to be a real-time chat on his website. And it's all updated without refreshing the page and uses the regular HTML gui. Very neat stuff.

Wrote my own:

[Phil John]

...at the time, the only other options (real options, not unteseted on large installations) were IChat and Volano, which both cost lots.

So, I wrote one in Java. And I've kept updating it, it's pretty nice, fully skinnable Applet (to fit in with look and feel of website), uses the Non-Blocking java.nio classes (i.e., no more need for 1 thread per connection, so it scales VERY well, at least 10000 concurrent connections is what I've tested up to), has an SSL web server built in for the admininstration interface, and my company offers a hosted version for 120 setup and 7.50 per month after that :o)

Atutor chat

[phlako66]

I've also been doing some research on web based chat in a production environment for elearning courses. This module released by the University of Toronto's Atutor project looks promising: http://www.atutor.ca/achat/