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[Cymon]

I want to add a live chat to my website next to a new feature I'll be debuting. Does anyone know what chat software is there that I can use?

[Don Andy]

I've been using FlashChat a while back. It's pretty OK, but it's usability depends a lot on how mature the people you expect to use it are.

There was also this PHP based chat (forgot which, but there are a lot) I used, but one of my old providers shut down the server without notice because it put too high a stress on the server. May be that these things are just not very optimized but I likely just configured it wrong.

[Snakey]

Typically a PHP chat application would use a lot of server time, because they probably used a low timeout AJAX call to check if anyone talked... which of course leads to high bandwidth usage and high server usage.

[mrfredman]

In my experience from the gang garrison forums, imbedded chat applications tend to suck up bandwidth like no other, which lead to some issues with our host and we ultimately chose to stop using one.

Our solution was to just use IRC and mibbit.com and make it abundantly clear on the site that chat was going on there. It made it easily accessible for IRC regulars, and mibbit made it accesible to chatroom newbs and those wanting to do everything from their browser.

I know it's not quite what you were looking for, but it's a solution that's worked marvolously well for us.

[Super Joe]

smoke signals

[Blademasterbobo]

smoke signals

How would one implement smoke signals on the internet? This sounds intriguing.

[William Laub]

smoke signals

How would one implement smoke signals on the internet? This sounds intriguing.

go outside

sincerely,
--gold cray, filling in for Super Joe

[Cymon]

Hmm, so php (and I assume javascript) are out. Good to know. The IRC is an interesting idea, but I want a vertically aligned client window on my page. Don't know how likely that is.

Hmm, clearly i have some research to do on this. Looks like ASCIIpOrtal is being delayed again.

[Alevice]

just use an embedded java app that connects to irc behind courtains.