Online chat can mean anything from a traditional direct chat room interface to the newer Shoutbox implementations that add instant messaging (IM) capabilities to a site. In recent years, chat features have gained a somewhat dubious reputation because of their use by predators who seek to lure underage participants. Not a week goes by without some news feature or investigative piece airing on television that describes some villain using a chat room for bad purposes.

While a huge majority of chat rooms are certainly not dens of iniquity, the problem is significant enough that you should give it serious consideration before adding these capabilities to your site. The immediate interactive nature of an online chat makes it much more likely to be abused than other technologies where interaction is non-instantaneous and, the interaction is generally posted for the entire world to see.

You should also know about the legal implications if a bad person were to use your site for some form of crime.

BlastChat
BlastChat is an Ajax-based component that provides chat services via a remote server (the BlastChat server). Since your server is only used for the connection initiation, none of your site resources or bandwidth is used when chat services are provided through this extension. The BlastChat site claims that more than 14,000 Web sites are using this chat technology. In addition to the basic chat component, a module is included that provides a who-is-online list, as well as a hypertext link that will connect to a profile of the users.

You can download the BlastChat package here:   www.blastchat.com

Installation of the component and modules is performed in the standard manner through the Extension Manager. After you install the BlastChat component, you can use the Joomla Administrator interface to create a BlastChat account. Open the Configuration screen in the Joomla Administrator interface by selecting that option under the BlastChat submenu displayed by the Components menu. You need to create an account with the BlastChat server before chat functionality is available for your site. A free registration can be configured through this screen.

Once you are registered with the BlastChat server, you must log in and set up the server registration for your Web site. With the registration, your Joomla site may also be entered into the BlastChat centralized chat directory, so your site may gain increased traffic as a result.

BlastChat uses Ajax to retrieve any chat entries. It simply displays the text in the chat area rather than requiring a complete HTTP update of the Web page. In the component administration screen, you can set the display parameter of the chat area, including Width, Height, Detached  Width, Detached  Height, Frame  Border, Margin  Width, and Margin  Height. For presentation, the extension uses the styles defined by the current template for display so that it will appear to be integrated with your Web site.

The administrator of the chat room has complete control over the interaction, including the capability to:

❑       Send public messages (to individual users and rooms)

❑       Kick users out of a room

❑       Ban users from a room or multiple rooms

❑       Set ban duration

❑       Ban based on IP address

❑       Assign moderator privileges to other users

The BlastChat interface is written in JavaScript and has been tested to work on Firefox (versions 1 and 2), Internet Explorer (versions 6 and 7), Opera (versions 8 and 9), and Netscape 8.1. It is also compatible with Joomfish and can use any language supported by that extension, including right-to-left text.

utChat
The utChat component is an extension that encapsulates the PhpFreeChat script so that it appears within the Joomla interface. Ajax technology is used to refresh the display without requiring a complete page refresh. utChat is a simple, multilingual chat implementation that uses very few server resources.

You can download the utChat extension here:   www.utopiart.com/telechargement/index.php

Install utChat components through the Extension Manager, and then create a menu item to access it on the front end. The utChat component doesn’t use the Joomla database to store messages and nicknames, but rather saves all chat messages in a simple filing system. PhpFreeChat (and, therefore, utChat) includes the following features:

❑       Multiple chat rooms

❑       Private messages between members

❑       Administrator moderation (including the ability to kick out or even ban a chat user)

❑       Presentation modifiable through Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) styles

❑       Support of any language that can be stored and displayed using UTF-8 character encoding

❑       Rich text chat support that includes smilies and style selection through BBCode

❑       A custom plug-in system that allows modification of data storage (for example, for writing into a database server)

By default, utChat doesn’t come configured for a default language. Once you have installed the compo- nent, select the utChat option under the Components menu in the Joomla Administrator interface. A text editor will be displayed to allow editing of the current parameter settings. These settings are stored in the form of PHP code that is executed directly by the extension.

Add the following parameter setting line to set the language used to be United States English:

$utparams[‘language’]  =  ‘en_US’;

For complete documentation on utChat (phpFreeChat), go to the following Web site:    www.phpFreeChat.net