Feel The Freedom of AJAX Based Chat Rooms

Chat rooms represent the most attractive form of entertainment and communication across the Internet. They can be used as a replacement for contact forms in case of websites providing live support for customers, can be employed in communities building around certain websites and more. The implementation of a chat system into a website will have at least two benefits: the return of visitors (customers) and the generation of an increased traffic as well as popularity for the respective website.

Pro Chat Rooms is an AJAX/PHP/MySQL based application which allows you to deploy a standalone multi-user chat system or to include such system into an existing website or CMS like Joomla!, Mambo, phpBB, aeDating, vBulletin and many others. This chat application supports three types of users: administrators, moderators and guests. The nature of their interactions with the chat rooms and the security features related to chat rooms access are specified in a single file.

The installation process requires the editing of two files: db.php and config.php, where you must specify the MySQL details, full path to Pro Chat Rooms application and respectively the URL of your chat room. In the install directory there is a file called help.php which shows the actual full path to the Pro Chat Rooms application.

The application installation contains one more step, namely the automatic import of SQL tables into the database. After this stage, the administration panel can be accessed (the install folder must be deleted). At this moment, it is recommended to return to the config.php file editing in order to specify the administrator user name and password, as well as other settings for badwords filter, moderators access parameters, fonts, screen text colors, audio parameters and so on. Practically, all functional parameters for the chat system are contained into the config.php file. The customization of the default application configuration is easy to perform, due to the existence of extensive comments indicating the available options for editable parameters values.

The administrator can securely login to the control panel by using a form protected with a random text captcha feature. From the control panel area, the administrator is able to manage users list (only the delete feature is available), bans and chat rooms creation. Regarding the global customization options, Pro Chat Rooms application provides flexibility in changing or adding avatars, smilies, additional languages, individual chat rooms backgrounds and more. If you integrate this chat system into an existing website or CMS, the layout colors can be changed to match your website color scheme by editing the file style.css. The default application functionalities can be extended through various modules.

If you want to define the terms of usage for the new users, the file must be named terms.php and situated in the help directory. After a user creates a new account, s/he will be able to login immediately to a chat room because the account creation is automatic by default. All other parameters specific to dynamic functionality of the chat rooms, like maximum chat room users, maximum message length, screen refreshing speed and more can be specified inside config.php file.

The advantages of this chat application are: the lightweight character of scripts file size, the small number of database tables and queries (practically the number of database queries is reduced to minimum), increased security features and the improved capacity of response due to AJAX technology. In the version 2.0.0 there is a small "bug", but not in the code: after the importing of database tables in the final installation phase, the administrator is invited to login by using the user name admin, which is not defined by default in the config.php file.

An average or a beginner user will be tempted to think that the application does not work because it cannot login to the application control panel. As a consequence, it is recommended to define a new user name and a password in the config.php file in order to be able to login to the control panel as administrator (and from security reasons too). In conclusion, Pro Chat Rooms application is an optimal chat system for small or medium websites, with extensible features and flexible configuration options, suitable both for beginners or advanced webmasters.

Note from author: In the updated versions the administrator login issue is corrected.

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