New Unofficial Blog Feature: Live Chat

[gruso]

I was introduced to http://tinychat.com today. It's a very cool service, check it out. While I was fooling around with it, I had the idea of embedding a Pandora chat room into the unofficial blog. Unfortunately you can't do this with Tinychat (yet), so I started looking at other options and found http://chatroll.com

The result: http://openpandora.w...om/pandora-chat

You can also visit the main page here: http://chatroll.com/pandorahandheld

It hasn't been announced on the blog yet, the only link is in this thread. We'll give it a test run for a day or so, and see if it's worth sticking with. Signup is optional at this stage, you can chat as a guest if you like. I'm not a huge fan of chat to be honest, so you probably won't see me hanging around in there for hours at a time. ^_^ But I'll be interested to see how it goes.

 

[zidane2009]

It's empty (assumably for now) but looks really good.
My only complaint is the major lag time (3 seconds per message post) and its not my internet

 

[gruso]

Yeah, it is a bit laggy. And empty of course, because no one knows about it.

 

[zidane2009]

Alright, well I bookmarked it anyways.
Chatango runs nicely too if you're up for a change, and I'm pretty sure it can be implemented easily into the forum

 

[lulzfish]

IRC works pretty well, too.
In fact, I think I'm going to start hanging out on there just to rebel against the new chat.

 

[atomicthumbs]

#pandora and #pandoradev already exist on EFnet, right? Or is it freenode?

 

[gruso]

I think it's EFnet... I've never been there TBH. Maybe I should look into embedding that instead?

 

[fischju2000]

Pjirc or any other java based IRC applet would be suited well for the job. I think it'd be better to show the #pandora channel rather than something else, and maybe the unofficial blog providing easy access will finally get people in there.

 

[gruso]

Yep, that's sounding like a good idea. Having the blog hosted at wordpress.com is fairly limiting though; we can't do custom plugins, only basic embedded stuff. I'll have to do some homework.

 

[atomicthumbs]

Yep, that's sounding like a good idea. Having the blog hosted at wordpress.com is fairly limiting though; we can't do custom plugins, only basic embedded stuff. I'll have to do some homework.

I have a Wordpress MU install running on my website. If you sign up, I can set you up with any plugins and/or themes you like (and domain mapping is free).

Edit:


And I allow ads

 

[gruso]

Interested! Let me do some (more) homework and get back to you.

 

[Pleng]

The problem with chat pages is that there needs to be people on there pretty much all the time, or have scheduled events, in order for it to work properly. What you really need is a shoutbox on the sidebar of the website which feeds directly from the chatroom so that users can see the progress of the chat, and join in, from any article that they are browsing.

 

[w1ll14m]

i'd say.... CGI:IRC
http://cgiirc.org/

--edit--
added url

 

[gruso]

Ok, here's where we're at.

- Wordpress.com has an official Meebo widget, which gives you sidebar access to MSN, AIM, GoogleTalk... not really what we want.
- Anything that uses javascript is banned for security reasons. That includes Pjirc, CGI:IRC, etc.
- Anything that requires files installed on the server end is out.

Taking up atomicthumbs on his excellent offer would solve all these problems. An iframe plugin + Mibbit gives us embedded IRC. The downside is the huge amount of work in migrating the blog. You can export the blog as XML, then import it at the new location, which isn't too bad. But then you have to go through every post correcting links, tags and images.

So I have to step back and ask myself, how much work am I signing up for just because someone gave me a link to tinychat.com today? Funny how these things snowball if you let them. I might just let the existing one run for now. Further suggestions are welcome of course, but I think we're at the limit of what Wordpress will let us do.

 

[marshal]

IRC channel is more than enough for me... Why not just put a link on the blog amd a small calender with events if necessary.

Having a integrated chat in the blog just seems overkill to me.

 

[sterling976]

You can export the blog as XML, then import it at the new location, which isn't too bad. But then you have to go through every post correcting links, tags and images.

Execute this during the migration process (after you export to xml, and prior to importing at the new location):

sed -i 's/<old base url>/<new base url>/g' *.xml

Remember to replace the old/new base urls with the actual values.

 

[dflemstr]

An embedded IRC client would do the trick, right? Especially if it's a Java one: No Javascript, only one external file (that can come from anywhere, e.g. other servers) and an experience that can be really really smooth if implemented correctly.

Anyways, IRC is the way to go, hands down. It's so annoying when you have to keep some web page open just to chat when you could have the alternative to use an IRC client instead.

Edit: you can use PJIRC without Javascript. It's not even difficult to do.

 

[MonkeyChops]

I think adding the irc to the site is a great idea.

I was on a site similar to the unofficial pandora site (don't remember if it was wordpress) and it used mibbit. Perhaps that is an option?

 

[Trip]

I think adding the irc to the site is a great idea.

I was on a site similar to the unofficial pandora site (don't remember if it was wordpress) and it used mibbit. Perhaps that is an option?

Mibbit looks like it could work well if you set it to auto connect the the main Pandora IRC channel.
You should be able to add it to the site using either a simple link to open it in a new browser tab, or you might be able to add it to the site itself by adding a Text widget to your side bar and placing the code in there.

 

[atomicthumbs]

You can export the blog as XML, then import it at the new location, which isn't too bad. But then you have to go through every post correcting links, tags and images.

I'll do it


Also, if you need anything else on the site (static HTML, other web apps, etc.) I can help with that. I have infinite bandwidth and don't afraid of anything.