A question for fellow coders/I.T./Web guys...

[Barfight]

I am working on a website for a guy who's looking to sell his new book online, and the Book is getting some serious critical acclaim, and he's looking to get a chatroom set up on his website so he can chat online every sunday evening with some readers...

Now, in the name of doing him a solid, I have decided to go the route of Chat Room / Message Board, so he can blog, and communicate with readers in a slower fashion if so desired, but I'm not exactly sure how to go about doing this. I know there are IPB boards that offer message boards with chatroom shoutboxes, but I haven't been able to locate one.

Anybody know where I could snatch one up? I'm hoping to not have to go the route of creating a flash chat... but I will if it's the last alternative...

Thanks!

[bfoust]

If you do not go that way, and want a real-time chat, I run a chat network on IRC (Internet Relay Chat).

All bandwidth used from the chat is ours, it doesn't use yours.

As far as integrated boards/chat, I don't know.

Mine is java and can be integrated into some php boards and such but I've never done it myself.

[Barfight]

went with flash chat. It'll just be so much easier doing it that way.

[Colton]

None of the boards come with a shoutbox, its usually a third party addon/modification. Shoutboxes put a pretty heavy load on the server, considering theyre refreshing every second, and if theres alot of people trying to watch it... well... its not pretty.

As for a chatroom, we use a java based IRC client on our website. Id tell ya to check it in the signature, but our host went down this morning and the site isnt working right =/

[Colton]

Okay, its back up now if you want to see that java IRC client. use test/test as login/password to access it if youre too lazy to register

Our webhost upgraded to apache 5.2 without telling anyone, so I had to edit a handfull of php.ini files to get the newest iconcube loader running =/