[How To?] Adding A Chat Feature

[mwforum]

My members are requesting me to add a chat feature to my forum. I have no clue what's involved. I did search for a mod to add this feature but I only came up with lightIRC. I'm running MyBB 1.8 and am wondering if lightIRC is my only options? I checked out the lightIRC web site but there wasn't a lot of helpful information about installing it for use with MyBB software. I would appreciate any guidance on setting up a chat feature on my forum.

Thanks.

[JimR]

try cometchat ... this works with whatever version you are running

[dragonexpert]

I think the OP is looking for a free chat. If you have PHP 5.4 or higher you can use DVZ Shoutbox. If you do not have PHP 5.4 or higher you can give LightIRC a try.

[.m.]

inferno shoutbox (modified version) should also work on MyBB 1.8

[HolyPhoenix]

AjaxChat works pretty well. http://frug.github.io/AJAX-Chat/

[mike537]

Can confirm above post Ajax Chat works fine on 1.8 

[mwforum]

Thanks for all of the suggestions. How much bandwidth, roughly, does a chat room take to run? My forum is on a paid, shared hosting service and I'm concerned the chat feature might eat up too much bandwidth.

Thanks.

[Darth Apple]

As far as bandwidth, it often depends on the chat room. Depending on how many users you average online, it could be anything from ~1-20 GB/month in bandwidth (assuming average use, nothing unreasonable). The main concern is generally more a matter of the server load. Chat rooms that are directly integrated with MyBB include global.php in every request, which makes several queries that may not be required in a chat room that is installed standalone. I had an integrated install of ajax chat with MyBB a while back, and it was definitely more load intensive than the standalone version.

[mwforum]

Thanks Darth Apple. I guess I used the incorrect term. I'm more concerned about server load. My forum has 800 members of which probably 100 are somewhat active. The most online at one time was 70. The most that would use the chat room at all is probably quite small.

Thanks for the information. This is a learning experience for me.

[Darth Apple]

I'd say if you're looking at averaging 5-20 users online at once, you are definitely fine using standalone chat rooms (assuming you are using a good script such as Ajax Chat and don't have a crappy host). 5-10 is pushing the limit a bit more with solutions integrated with MyBB, but it all depends very much on the script used.