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Chat rooms

Fri, 01/08/2008 - 14:34 — thomasmuirhead
I was wondering if I could use this as a place to pick some of your brains about chat rooms. What chat rooms do you recommend? The drupal chatroom module causes (unsolved) problems and I was wondering what (if any) external chatrooms any of you guys had used, and if you have how well they integrate into drupal? Thomas Macmillan Cancer Support
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Fri, 01/08/2008 - 16:27 — Mark@Epilepsy Action

Hi Thomas, The chat rooms

Hi Thomas, The chat rooms have been the bane of our life, but we're happily using avchat at the moment. Mark Epilepsy Action forum4e.com
Fri, 08/08/2008 - 23:27 — MattyB
MattyB's picture

Stumbling blocks

Hi Mark What stumbling blocks got in your way when adding chat rooms. Was it finding the appropriate software, or was there more to it than that. I only ask because I'm toying with the idea of adding a chat room to my local communities website, but have ummmed and rrrred for ages now wether to do it or not. My biggest concern would be hits on the server. Matt Burke - Stoke-on-Trent http://www.interadvertising.co.uk
Mon, 04/08/2008 - 13:32 — budda
budda's picture

Some options

Depending on your needs, there's a couple of free services which will host your chat room. However you are unable to control who joins the room. See http://drupal.org/project/mebeam_chat or http://www.meebo.com/rooms/ If you're able to run your own private IRC server, and your users are not likely to have firewall and port blocking problems (http://drupal.org/project/cgiirc might help here), then consider this project - http://drupal.org/project/mibbit_irc -- www.ixis.co.uk
Tue, 05/08/2008 - 09:41 — thomasmuirhead

Potential for Drupal for NGOs first piece of collective action

Thanks Mark and budda...it's interesting to consider the possibilities, but it still brings me back to the fact that Drupal needs a sophisticated, robust chat room module. This has got me wondering if we can use this need to create the first example of Drupal for NGOs actively getting together and working on a module. The idea was mooted in a number of forms at the last meeting. Do we all come together to finance the development of a module or profile? or do we come together to work on a module or profile? I think a chat room module is the perfect example of something many NGOs will need as the community arena grows. It would be interesting to know if there are enough NGOs or Drupal agencies who build for NGOs who would be willing to pool their knowledge/resources/time to help progress the chat room module from where it is. Whether that's by getting together for a code sprint, or pooling resources to get the module built I'm not sure...but just throwing it out there to see if there are others keen on the idea.
Wed, 20/08/2008 - 13:01 — budda
budda's picture

Chat rooms for free

Hi Thomas, A chat room in itself is a large and complex project. Look at the Meebo.com guys, they have a whole business around the development of a robust chat room system which doesn't kill the server hosting it due to many connections. A good technical break down on the technology can be found on http://news.oreilly.com/2008/07/how-comet-bri... - and as you'll see, they ended up developing a server module in C++ ! Integrating Drupal with the likes of a commercial product like AVChat might be handy, although not always cost effective. The IRC server approach is cheap, but you need the technical support to stay on top of that - plus a lot of hosts don't allow running IRC servers. -- Drupal Consultancy from Ixis
Mon, 08/09/2008 - 14:33 — Robert Castelo
Robert Castelo's picture

Parachat

Parachat module has just been released.

I haven't tried it, but might be worth giving it a spin if you need a chatroom.

Tue, 09/09/2008 - 13:08 — thomasmuirhead

Thanks Robert

I might give that a try...
Fri, 20/02/2009 - 12:59 — Robert Castelo
Robert Castelo's picture

Talkinator

Another interesting third party hosted chat room option:

http://drupal.org/project/talkinator

Wed, 03/06/2009 - 11:05 — budda
budda's picture

External account required

Sadly Parachat requires an external Parachat account, which can confuse users in a community. Shame. -- Drupal Consultancy from Ixis
Wed, 03/06/2009 - 11:14 — thomasmuirhead

Parachat

We're currently using parachat...and it's fine. Users don't require a parachat account...only the site admin does. You have to pay for it, but it integrates directly into the site...no need for users to log in again or anything.