Decided to try my hand at a contrib that some might find worthwhile. It's my first one and I don't know much at all about programming so forgive my bumbling.

I borrowed the idea, code, and everything else from Adeptus (as I am sure he pretty much did the same thing) as implemented in his Fireboard RE. I still have some testing to do before dropping the hacks. I have some styling issues to work out as the plugin uses it's own embedded CSS and not the forum.css. I think if I can just move it into the forums.css it should fix everything. I also have to figure out how it's integrated into the forum config to be visible. I'll work on it some more during the week.

To see a working implementation check out this link.

Doesn't look like there's much interest in this but I'm going to forge along. If I can figure this one out I may be able to integrate other goodies into FB as hack/plugins.

But right now I would like to get some people to test out the functionality of the chat I have set up at the above link. I'm mainly trying to see if the configuration from the control panel is working om the front end. Previously I had it set up to NOT allow guests to post in the chat and now I do. So if you get a moment stop in and just enter some text to see if it IS working. If so I'll clean up a few details and release the hack as it stands now and update as I go along.

Thanks.

I like the chat function. Looks good. Seems to work well.

I'm curious as to how the data is stored and how can it be administrated?

Sorry friend, but I oppose it.

CHAT tools are real Server-Database-Bandwidth killer and specially the AJAX ares.
Believe me, I have seen server overload just due to chat.

I really don't want to see it in-build with FB.

A suggestion to you -

There are many FLASH-AJAX based chat tools available. Incorporate them with very small coding.

I'm not suggesting to include it into future builds. But I will look into other, less "intensive" apps to incorporate if I'm sucessful with this one and feel confident that I can. This particular app was claimed to be not so much of a resource hog and DID NOT utilize the database at all. The chat info is probably stored in a flat file.

But remember, I am not a programmer, coder or anything of the like. This is my first attempt at integrating a plugin. No more and no less. I just thought I'd share it. I don't have much experience in this area but hope to gain some. Thanks for your suggestion.

I think I'm about done with porting this over from the RE version. The only Issue I have now is that all of a sudden it's showing REAL names instead of USER names. Don't think I changed anything that should have affected that but I'll try and hunt it down.

Ultimately there was a lot of code to hack/insert and I most likely butchered but it seems to work just fine. I'll document the changes and upload the chat plugin in a day or so.

And I've verified that it saved the chat session in a flat text file.

I originally posted in this in the Wishlist and Suggestions forum as a suggestion. That being said I understand that some of you think this is a wasted effort. In response to that I thought I'd move my response to that resistance to a more appropriate forum-this one.

"Okay. Let me clarify ONCE-AND-FOR-ALL. This is just a personal exercise to see if I can do it. I am trying to learn something here. And while I'm doing that I'm gaining a greater understanding of how Fireboard works. I am not a programmer of any sort. Think of this as a log, although somewhat sparse, of my progress. If I am successful I will make the files and hacks available to anyone that wants them. I am not on the dev team so this isn't distracting me from anything (concerning the current development of Fireboard). I am also not offering this up as a feature to be included in any future release. This is just a personal project I'd thought I'd share with any interested parties. If you think this is a waste of time or that I'm using the wrong resources then so be it."

When I'm done I hope somebody gets some use out of this. I don't know why people think I'm polling to ask whether this was a good idea or not. Adeptus thought enough of it to implement it into RE so I thought I'd give it a shot.

I would like a shoutbox at top. Think it will get more activity in the forums in comparison to the homepage.

There are 100s of chat/shout-box components-modules for Joomla.
Use them.

Before you attempt this BACKUP!!! BACKUP!!! BACKUP!!! BACKUP!!! Perform a backup of all the files you will be touching.

This DOES NOT modify the database at all so to all of the SQL squeamish-don't worry!

I'm not responsible for any damage you may cause to your Joomla/Fireboard install. I am a rank amateur when it come to stuff like this so use at your own risk.
Contained in this zip are the files I modified. If you have NEVER modified these files you can probably just overwrite the originals.

Note*-I did not move any of the CSS elements of this hack into the forum.css file because I didn't want to "connect" this hack so tightly into the Fireboard code.

I DID NOT get to thoroughly test this for bugs as I was more interested in seeing if I could pull this off. If you find any bugs or strange characters popping up that's probably because I wasn't looking for them. I'm not supporting this in any way shape or form since this stuff is a little out of my realm of expertise. Hopefully our fellow forum members will lend a hand where needed.

Instructions/files are in the included zip file. Good luck.