Chat rooms

The part of his message that I quoted is referring to Facebook's chat - which is one-on-one, if I am not mistaken.

 

I'm all for the standalone chatrooms. I'm neutral about the chatbox/shoutboxes though.

I have weekly or bi-weekly chats and trivia sessions LIVE in the chatrooms and folks sometimes go in there and chat it up about their vacations, etc. It's definitely something that helps 'bridge the gap' and make our member interactions much more personal. Sometimes, folks are much more open to making a statement or talking about something with the other members in that chat room rather than having it appear 'in print' for the rest of the world to read and see over and over.

As far as the chatboxes or shoutboxes, those are effective for the little "good morning!" and "I'm online now" sort of messages. But, once you get into discussions, now you are circumventing the forum because of the fact that these are simply 'postings' and you aren't getting nearly the 'personal touch' as you would in a chat conversation in a standalone.

That's my opinion and I'm stickin' to it! Unless, of course, someone else has a much better argument

 

yep yep I know. I was just making an observation about his post in general.

 

Yeah agreed. That's where having rules for the chatbox is important. Hi's, howdy's, how was your day, are all fine. "Forum subjects must move to the forum, thanks y'all and have a good one".

 

On the old forum it certainly drew away some activity as the main members would just huddle in the chatroom instead of the forum, and I don't blame them, it was easier, faster and more convenient.

So now we only throw up a shoutbox when we're streaming live events. It's amazing, it's like watching the fights with everyone around you.

 

LOL, that's a good way to use it.

 

Took me a second to realize that you were talking about; you had me worried for a bit. :rofl:

 

This should be accomplished with a cached Twitter stream and be a lot more beneficial for your site in the long run in my opinion. User's sign up for your site and connect their twitter accounts. You show the Twitter stream on a page or in the sidebar. If the user has a Twitter account, then show a reply box where they can enter their own message.

This allows them the chit chat on your site but doesn't distract from it as much and you can get more advertising for your site if you use the API and get it approved as an "Application".

 

Wayne, that Twitter idea sounds great. Can you help us by showing us how or at least pointing us in the right direction for getting something like this done?

Sounds like a perfect solution and a great alternative.

 

I agree. I'm lovin' it

 

It was actually something I thought up while looking at this thread. I know there are a couple of sites that do something similar like tweetqa.com and earthtweet.com. I haven't looked at the Twitter API for the specifics on implementing it though. I'll look at it later today when I have more time.

 

Wayne, I had a friend that started to put together the script for me on something like TweetQA for some sites that I was working on. But, he didn't have enough time to dedicate to me as he has lots of other clients and I'm on the "I'll get to you when I have a free moment" plan

Since he doesn't charge me, it's one of those things where I get bumped in priority, of course. But, I'd love to have something like that.

Please keep us posted! :thumbup:

 

My forum has a shoutbox and flash chat. The shoutbox only stays up because one member really likes it and a he and a couple of others BS in there from time to time so it keeps them happy. Although it's a little bit of a pain in the arse to upgrade.

Flash Chat is a waste, it's rarely used we tried doing scheduled chats everyone said they would come and no one showed up. Plus the fact that it appears you cannot upgrade flashchat you have to manually drop the DB tables on every upgrade and install fresh, is annoying.

Other than that, I'm neutral on them.

 

I bought Flashchat a few months ago and I don't think any of my members (other than myself and one moderator) have used it once. :p
What a waste.

 

Hmmm... I've never used Flash Chat. It's a waste, you say?

 

I've actually had the opposite experience with FlashChat. We have lots of 'themed LIVE chats and trivia games' on our site. We have some featured folks that we bring in to chat with and ask questions. And, it's worked out great for us.

 

Well, it's nice and all but the members don't use it. :p
It was $5; if it was gratis, I wouldn't be complaining though. :lol:

 

That sounds like great fun, Arny! I wish my community was as enthusiastic as yours.

 

I think that I'll give it a try - although I'm always hesitant to add a live chat plugin to my forums, regardless of the fact that they are indeed "safely" active.

 

I did use an AJAX shout-box vB mod once on my largest forum. It was quite popular but it did pull activity from the forum itself. So instead we held a "shout night" about two to three times a month where I would enable the mod for about 24 hours. Everyone was always so hyped about it.