Chat?

[Darkhog]

How about adding chatbox into forums? I've seen many chat plugins for vBulletin and this would allow people to chit-chat about whatever (don't suggest offtopic section - I'm talking about realtime chit-chat). Of course to avoid s(p|c)ammers, chat would be available to users that were accepted in new members section.

[SilverWarior]

We actually do have realtime chat (AJAX based chat) we were testing some time ago but it never caught on. You have to realize that PGD members come from all around the world so it is quite hard to catch up with most of them due to time difference.
Anywhay if you wanna try it go to http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/chat/?lang=en but I'm afraid that for most of the time you will be there alone.

[User137]

Have to put it in the bookmark toolbar Maybe put the chat link there next to "What's New?", if possible. It would catch more attention i'm sure.

[Darkhog]

Well, if it would be IFRAMEd in forums, I'm sure there would be more people on it, since some may simply don't know about it (like me and User137 it seems).

[SilverWarior]

Wehn Jason (Will) decided to include live chatting capability to PGD site he wanted something whoc would also be compatible with mobile devices (ability to connect usins special mobile APP) but he wasn't able of finding suitable solution.
So current chat is one of rare that fits the basic desires that Jason wanted from it:
- non third party dependable, so you are not dependant on whether some third party service orks or not
- no need to use custom web service as this would only complicate site managment (especially with previoust site host)
- ability to integrate site login creditentials and therefore preventing the chat system to be swarmed with various pam bots (happens to IRC chat rooms quite a lot).
- ability to be able to use this chat system from mobile devices. As far as I know this chat system should work on most mobile browsers (haven't tested it myself).

But the current chat system does have some problems.
The biggest problem which we didn't manage to figure out for quite some time is automatic logouts that were throwin user out of chatbox system in the midle of their chat sesions. You can't like any chat system which would simply throw you out while typing your next message.
Jason was actually planning on removing the chat system for that but then I managed to figure out why this is happening.
The chat system uses PGD site cookie for checking login creditentials. And becouse by default PGD cookie has 15 min avliadtion (automatic logout after 15 minutes of inactivity) this caused users to be thrown out of chat box 15 minutes after the last activity on PGD site (browsing through forums).
Workaround for this is using permament login to PGD site (checking "Remember Me" during the logon process). This creates a permament cookie for PGD site.
Of course using permament cookies is not always desireble. For instance if you are accsing PGD site from some public you definitly wouldn't like to use permament login becouse if you forgot to logut you actually alow someone else to acces PGD site using your login creditentials.
Also many users simply have permament cookies disabled in their browsers so they can't use this workaround at all.

Now if you realy desire this chat system to be visible from front page I can talk to Jason about including a link on front page for it. But I think we can all agree that this chat system should only be avialable to registered users of PGD, moderated users excluded unles you wan't it to be filed with various spam.

[Darkhog]

Well, I think iframing it would be better solution (less clicking, more chatting). And of course, it should be available only to registered and verified members of PGD.

For cookie issue, maybe it'd be wise increase default cookie length to like 3 hours or so or treat sending message in chat as "site activity" and refresh cookie (possibly last option as it would be cleaner)?

[SilverWarior]

Well, I think iframing it would be better solution (less clicking, more chatting). And of course, it should be available only to registered and verified members of PGD.

I don't think this would be good solution as many mobile device browsers lack IFraming capability.

For cookie issue, maybe it'd be wise increase default cookie length to like 3 hours or so or treat sending message in chat as "site activity" and refresh cookie (possibly last option as it would be cleaner)?

Yes increasing lifetime of cookie could be done easily. But unfortunately the chat message itself doesn't supports cookie interaction so it can't renew them and in such way indicate forum activity.

[User137]

I don't really like that chat system actually. Everybody seeing everything that's happened before is a little breach of privacy imo. Doesn't give a very casual feeling from the start. Who knows somebody likes to discuss reallife matters, foods, games and so on, do we need to see all of them if we weren't part of discussion? Also i've been in numerous IRC chats, and never seen a single spammer. I don't really know where your experiences with them base on.

[wodzu]

I would really like to see a chat possibility on the main form even as a hyperlink to other page. If I would not read Darkhog's post I would not know about this funcionality.

[imcold]

I vote for an irc channel, Freenode is a nice place to hang around. Also, we could use a bot for authentization, checking login and password against the forum db is easy.