NChat - No SQL Save BW shoutbox

[Rayvon]

I installed this but only admin can see the shoutbox and I can't figure out why

You should set permission for each group that you want them to see the chat box

Everything seems to be working great - but we've noticed that newly registered users can see the chatbox .. There is no where in the SMF Permissions portion of the Admin Panel to edit this group to prevent this .. Help???

I've found a little work-around for this, but is there a way the settings could be fixed for those with no primary membergroups?


My workaround: I created a group and titled it 'Newly Registered' and have set the permissions for 'Registered' to use its own set [versus its own set or borrowed from another set]

[Rayvon]

This work-around actually didn't work after taking a closer look ... Setting it to 'deny' and matching the uneditable permission set of 'Registered' with it prevents everyone except Admins from being able to use the functions ...

Can anything be done about the 'No primary membergroup' permissions?

[Rayvon]

Blah - disregard the above ... Series of brain farts .. Flatulence cleared up; "Regular Members" in the Permissions settings is the "No Primary Membergroup" set, I removed the couple masks that were inheriting from it and fixed up nchat permissions to the 'X' column .. Everythings all good and working very properly  ..

[peps1]

NOTE
+ CHMOD 0666 for these files: l.txt, NChatMess.php, NChatMuteList.php
+ CHMOD 0644 for all the files left
+ CHMOD 0755 for these folders: ./NChat, ./NChat/sounds

You have to set the permission for each group after install the mod! By default just admin can read, write and manager the chatbox.

What about Windows servers, as I understand they don't use CHMOD?

So right now I just get

The ./nchat/index.php is now unavailable! Please contact admin forum about this issue!

in the chat box

[peps1]

I don't see a  "l.txt" file to set a permission on?

using 2.0.10

Also have a member reporting they can see the message then it disappears and is replaced with:

The ./nchat/index.php is now unavailable! Please contact admin forum about this issue!

[Siirist]

I don't see a  "l.txt" file to set a permission on?

using 2.0.10

Also have a member reporting they can see the message then it disappears and is replaced with:

The ./nchat/index.php is now unavailable! Please contact admin forum about this issue!

1) I had the same problem. To my knowledge, after searching on my host, there is NOT a "l.txt" file.

2) The "... now unavailable was corrected by setting the permissions.
REALLY REALLY make sure you set permissions EXACTLY as instructed.

I have the following themes:
SMF Default Curve (of course)
1038 {Fresh Look} (NOTE: This is my default theme on the forum)
Havvo
Fumes (this is the one I use)

When I installed, it only offered Havvo and Fumes as the additional themes to install on (Fresh Look just wasn't there).

After installing, I set the permissions, and then went to manually modify the file for the Fresh Look theme.
Once I got to the Fresh Look folder I discovered that the files for NChat were present.
Went back to my forum, change my theme to Fresh Look and there it was, and fully functional.

NOTE: You CAN use html code in the "Admin Message". Here is what I was able to do.

Code Select Expand


<font color="#808080"><b>Welcome</b>! &nbsp; <u>NOTE:</u> This Chat is <u>NOT</u> private! &nbsp; All members have access. Bad word censoring is turned on.
<font color="#808080">makes the text dark grey, <b>turns on bold, </b>turns off bold, <u>turns on underline, </u>turns off underline, and "&nbsp; " = inserts an extra space.

Be Well,
Siirist

[Deprecated]

I decided to give this mod a try again, and I was surprised that it worked fine right out of the box on SMF 2.0.11 !!!

I did some tweaks on it to make the appearance more pleasing to me. I got rid of that admin bar thing. I changed a few text messages (like the button you push to send a line now says "Send"). I changed the CSS around a bit, changing some of the spacing that didn't appear right for me. Made the chat box a bit taller to show more lines.

I was a bit amused to discover the mod uses a flat file (NChatMess.php) to store the messages. I'm not sure that is more efficient than SQL or not. Perhaps later I'll just mod the code and stick the messages in a SMF setting. Perhaps I'll just tell myself it doesn't matter.

Everything considered, it's not a great mod IMO but it's not a bad mod either. There's a few bugs like the smileys get pretty crazy if you show them and then hit 'more.' Big smileys in the first row seem to overlap the B I U and text color etc. It would be nice if the button toggled to "hide smileys" when they are being shown, but a page refresh will do that too.

If I were the author I would check the 2.0.11 compatibility box. I tested it first on a clean test forum (no mods) and when I was happy with my modified NChat I installed it on my pre-production forum (8-10 mods written by my favorite mod author ) and no interactions observed. This is the best chat or shout box I tested and I've decided to stick with it for the time being.

[Deprecated]

Oops I spoke too soon. After I put it in production I noticed after a time you get this message:

"The ./nchat/index.php is now unavailable! Please contact admin forum about this issue!"

[Deprecated]

I keep getting

Code Select Expand

The ./nchat/index.php is now unavailable! Please contact admin forum about this issue!


I'm not sure, but I think that is the error you get when you get a disconnected status, from a lag or problem on your internet, if it only happens sometimes. I might be mistaking it for another message though, they're similar, and I changed mine to be more clear

In reading the back topic I see I'm not the only one. First of all, I think at least I'll change the message to "Please refresh your browser to update the chat box."

IMO it probably has something to do with the update/refresh cycle but I haven't dug into the mod that far yet.

[Deprecated]

Not sure this was mentioned yet, but there's a bug with emotes that if you have two emotes with the same image, one of them will always break.

The broken code looks like this:

Code Select Expand

<img src="http://domain.com/Smileys/custom/X<img src=" http:="" domain.com="" smileys="" custom="" xxdx.gif'="">

And a suggestion as well: Would be much better if the emotes used the emotes from SMF in the same way, such as same order, not displaying hidden ones, etc, because otherwise the emotes become a mess.

(As for why you'd have two emotes with the same image: Hidden ones with a different code for old users that prefer to type it another way).

That's one of my critiques too, that the mod doesn't respect the "hidden" attribute of smileys. And as you said sometimes you hide smileys to cover changed codes that break old uses of that smiley. Might be a solution to create a separate smiley set just for the mod.

[Deprecated]

just installed yesterday, i need this working!
Error: The ./nchat/index.php is now unavailable! Please contact admin forum about this issue!

Lots of problems with this one. BTW I'm using FF. I have a suspicion the cause and solution will be found in the JavaScript. I'll pore over the JS and AJAX and see if anything stands out.

It's clear this is a persistent problem for many and should be solved. As it stands right now this chat box is the only mod that comes even close to being acceptable. Many are suffering even if infrequently, so it's important to figure this out. I'm pretty good at this (and rather immodest) and I'm practically certain this can be solved. At least for the time I think I'll change the message to "refresh your browser" LOL!

[Deprecated]

I think I found a fix for the "Error: The ./nchat/index.php is now unavailable! Please contact admin forum about this issue!"

In NChatBoardIndex.php,

find:

Code Select Expand

}else if(show_err == true)
   nchatOutput.innerHTML = "<div class=\'errorbox\'>'.$txt['nchat_index_unavailable'].'</div>";


replace:

Code Select Expand

}else if(show_err == true)
   window.location.reload(true);

In other words, when there's a problem don't just complain about it, do something about it! Like if your house is burning down, don't shout "Fire!" Go grab a water hose!

NChat obviously recognizes it has a problem so you see the message. My fix simply reloads the whole page. The problem is gone after the page is reloaded.

I used to see the problem often before my fix, but I haven't seen it since. Please post your experience with this fix if you try it.

[Deprecated]

By the way, I got NChat working... Sorta... The biggest problems are:

1.) It shows the time in forum time, doesn't display time in each member's chosen time zone. In my case I picked GMT (UTC) for forum time because it's the default that makes the most sense. (Sure must be nice to live in England.) So if you want to see when what lines were sent you have to do a mental conversion from whatever time zone the forum's default is, because unless you live in that time zone it doesn't show your local time. This is by the way caused by storing the messages in a flat file where you can't change the flat file time stamps for every member's preference.

2.) I got it looking good after I removed the pointless Admin message. I tinkered the CSS, removed the scroll bar, hid the overflow. Without that, once the box fills up with new messages on bottom, each new message causes a scroll with the new message hidden. My fix works in new messages on top and overflow hidden.  Looks barely passable. I'd be happier if I could get this to work new messages on bottom, but couldn't. Maybe add an event and scroll to bottom might fix that.

3.) The whole concept of storing the chat in a flat file NChatMess.php is lunacy. Like, your HDD is faster than MySQL running in SSD? Like there aren't already a zillion things in SMF's database and a few lines more used for chat is going to bring the whole forum crashing down? And what's with that last.html??? Is it storing the time of the last entry? That can't go in the database??? OM*G! ---- This mod comes so close, and its author obviously spent lots of time writing it, but he never finished it. (And obviously doesn't intend to, hence the GitHub.)

4.) There's a vBulletin chat box mod that stores ALL chat history back to the when the mod was installed (or when the admin last cleared it). Users can modify their own line after posted. They can even go back weeks and change old lines. And you can read the back chat as far back as you want. Moderators can edit all posts. And much more.

NChat will have to do for the time being, until I either find another mod, find some external chat that can be integrated into SMF, or when I write my own. Heh, too bad you can't port vBulletin mods to SMF.

[zapiy]

ok there is a way to view this via forum/NChat/index.php?action=room but its the same size as the shoutbox above the forum.. is there a way to make this larger and not affect the one on the forum?

Thanks

[mj.]

Excuse me not reading the bajillion posts in this thread.  Is there an easy way to make this appear if the user picks unread posts.  Please forgive me for not being a PHP or theme expert.

[mj.]

Ok, I figured out how to put this on every page but I'm not sure I want to do that now, I may get smacked for being annoying.  I have 1 constructive suggestion.  PLEASE put the permissions for this under a separate subheading.  I looked forever for them, they shouldn't be in General in my opinion.  I've uploaded a screenshot that shows how SMF Gallery has done them.  Thanks.

[rcane]

Hello,

I can't seem to see the mod after installing--regardless of member group or permissions.

[Mick.]

This author hasn't been active since 2014 

[rcane]

This author hasn't been active since 2014 

so you're saying there's a chance?

[Mick.]

This author hasn't been active since 2014 

so you're saying there's a chance?

I'm saying it may be hard to get support for this mod from the author.