I looked around and saw many chat room scripts, but to be honest they all didn't seem to fit what I was trying to do. The thing I was trying to do was provide a private area where I could discuss something with one or more guys on a client team -- a client chat tool. No frills. No one-on-one chat. However, it would be password-protected.
So, I'm going to build my own over the next couple months. Here's the list of features:
- attractive appearance like ajaxim.com, but not as full-featured
- the fewest files possible to make this happen
- based on MySQL because not all guys have SQLite drivers on their web hosting plans, although SQLite would be ideal for this project
- no MVC framework -- just really short code here, but would use
CCAPS for a template file so that it can be rethemed easier
- a really attractive appearance -- more like ajaxim.com's interface to some degree, but slimmer on features
- no smilies and trash like that (clients don't care and people normally use emoticons in chat because it's faster)
- clients get their own chat room with me -- no two clients can see each other's chat rooms
- multiple people on the client team can join in the same discussion with their own ids
- uses jQuery and AJAX as well
- It's simple to setup. Just copy to the web server in a subdirectory, hyperlink to it, and click the hyperlink. It will automatically tell you what to do just like WordPress' setup. It will create its own tables if you create a user and a database and make the user have full privs on the database.
- the admin interface is just the chat window with the admin account, but has extra features:
.addroom <room name> <common password>
.droproom <room name>
.roompass <room name> <new password for room>
.adduser <room name> <username> <M/male/F/female -- adjusts the icon, and is optional>
.dropuser <room name> <username>
.dropusers <room name>
.users --> shows users and their assigned rooms
.rooms --> shows rooms
.help --> shows this list
.list --> shows this list
If you forget an option, it will prompt you. Such as, typing .addroom will then ask you for a room name and a password, and typing Enter with nothing cancels the request, as does Esc.
- on login it asks for the chat room and you must remember it -- it doesn't use a popdown list. So, you have to remember like your company name.
- it only has one user password, and that's the password to the room, shared by all users
- the admin gets his own exclusive password and can login to any room, but only one room at a time per browser tab.
- each chat post will show the time in brackets using what their browser says is their local time
- can click Save to export a transcript
- can click Clear to clear only your view of the messages
- can click Logout to return to the login form
- each user text and icon color will appear in a unique earth-tone color
- 3 paned chat interface like normal
- no file upload, but clicking the "File Upload" button will show a dialog box that says, "For file upload, we recommend DropBox. Click here to find out more."
- hyperlinks become active
- no spell check except "Teh " and " teh " becomes "The " and " the " respectively, and an admin can edit a file to enhance that
- italic system messages for joins and leaves
- updates in real time via jQuery and AJAX
And I think I'll charge $40 USD for it for other freelancers to add to their site, uploaded to SiteScripts.com. People will be able to try a demo to consider the purchase. The demo will be hosted and have CPM banner ads.
Stay tuned.