Looking for shout box mod that works out of the box

[Just Another Member]

I've never found any shout box that didn't have some problem. Best I could find was one that uses server time, but couldn't get it to show in each user's time zone.

I've run SMF forums before and decided to start a new one. Well not a new one but bring back an old one, and I figured out I'd start with a virgin release and install the shout box first, and then add MY mods.

The shout box should have admin and member edit functions (to fix their typos).

Suggestions?

[br360]

Have you taken a look at this mod? https://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=1295

[Just Another Member]

Yes, thank you, I did. I was never able to make it work well with my forum like before I shut my forom down. I give up. I even tried it on a test forum and with no mods at all

[br360]

I've used it on numerous forums for years with no real issues. What issues did you have and why were you unable to get it working?

[Gwenwyfar]

I ran across the same problem, eventually settled with one not in the mod site. Still had it's problems, but they were acceptable for what I wanted. Now if only I could find the post...

It was just named "talkbox", if you want to try looking for it.

[Just Another Member]

BR360 it was over a year ago and all I remember now is that there were problems.

I installed this one horrid shout box that kept its data in a text file! I forget which.

Gwenwyfar thanks for the suggestion I'll appreciate if you remember what it was to let me know.

I just got my old "kicked to the curb" forum back up and running an hour ago and have a lot of reconfiguring to do, adding mods, etc. Plus I'm not going to recreate the old forum exactly. Changes, changes... I haven't yet set up any test forums so that's next on my list, and when I get them up I'll start trying shout boxes again. You know, the only way to test any mod—your own or somebody else's—is to install it on a test forum with absolutely no mods. Get it working there and then try it on your production forum.

Even better if you have a clone of your production forum with all your production forum's mods to test before going live.

So when my punch list has a dozen fewer action items I can go gen up a test forum and start slapping shout boxes on them, see what works.

You would think that 2.0 would have at least one easy to use well thought out shout box but I have found none to date. My old one worked sort'a okay but could only show date in system time e.g. GMT. I can do GMT or any other conversions because my advertising manager is almost 12 hours off from me (12:30 because he's in India) and my sister is I think 8 hours different from mine, so I'm always converting time zones. It's kind of fun, kind of a PITA. It's fun with sis because our days are almost upside down!

Thanks all, I'll check out what I find, maybe contact the authors in their support threads. Maybe back here if none of them are adequate.

You would think 2.0.15 would have at least one "never fails."

Thanks for your comments gang!


Topic not really solved but might as well put it off to another date.

[Gwenwyfar]

I still have the package, but legality yadayada. Found the original post: Talkbox

It doesn't auto-delete old messages and if the chat gets too long it may not scroll all the way to the bottom automatically, but I think those are much easier problems to handle than most others out there (among smaller issues like not looking very nice, but these are the easy problems).

If that still doesn't do it for you maybe you could look into a standalone chat outside SMF and port/implement it over

[Just Another Member]

Thanks Gwenwyfar! I had to hack the shout box I used for a year, so no prob hacking another one! Maybe this one will be hackable into something better. Maybe I'll be the one to write the right shout box! This didn't always be this way. We used to have 3-4 good shout boxes but for whatever reason they became incompatible or the authors withdrew them or something. Last time I looked about a year or go there was nada that worked for me.

You and think a lot alike! If we can't find something off the shelf then find the next best thing and hack it in! That's what I did last time and got almost what I want except couldn't translate UTC into each member's local time. It did the job but I was never satisfied with it.

The real problem in integrating anything is to interface the SMF sign-in with the chat sign-in so that chat parallel's SMF's user base without a separate login.

I've also been looking for a stand alone for a paying customer I just took on (my server biz), a ham radio club that wants chat but doesn't want a forum (yet). There are plenty of corporate chat support open source choices for my ham customers (similar to corporate chat apps), and I might be able to hack one of them into using SMF's SSI to hook into the SMF user base, for authentication.

I'm very fortunate to have total control over my server so my imagination and my skills are the limit. I've been doing IT consulting on corporate apps (boring) but I developed the right skill set to cobble disparate packages together. Thank you again for going to the extra effort to find that link for me!

I used to help ppl here under my last (forgotten) account and I'll hit some topics from time to time and pay it forward! Woo hoo!

I'll post back if I find anything useful!

Suzy