Live chat.. Chris read this!

[soap]

Hello duuuuuuuuudes.

So you know the scenario where you either post a problem or are helping somebody with a problem and they don’t respond for a few days or you don’t respond for a few days and the post gets forgotten and the world starts to end.

But really, sometimes waiting hours or days for a duder you’re trying to help or somebody who is helping you can be a bit frustrating.

Based on these opinions, I decided it would be nice for css-tricks to have live chat. These chatrooms could be moderated to eliminate abuse and wild kids being wild.

This would enable us to help and be helped on an immediate and live basis.

Discuss.

[soap]

Who says it needs to be big? It could potentially have the same user base as it does now. Anyway, when did the fear of hackers ever stop anybody from trying to make something popular? I think it would be a great addition to css-tricks.

[soap]

That’s very unfortunate. I guess I don’t see the connection between live chat and hackers. Care to elaborate?

[jamygolden]

He’s just saying it creates vulnerabilities.

Personally, I like answering questions in my own time. Also, it’s no ones ‘job’ to be on these forums. By this I mean that people generally have lots of other stuff going on.

I won’t be able to answer things immediately since I’m normally busy. I answer questions and reply as soon as I can and this ‘as soon as I can‘ can have gaps of up to a few hours.

[soap]

Of course nobody is required to help anybody or do anything on these forums. If somebody wants to help somebody on an immediate basis, it’s their choice. I personally would love to be able to log on and ask a question and have somebody help me in real time as I would love to help people in real time.

Something like this wouldn’t need to replace forums. If you don’t have time to help somebody in real time, don’t help somebody in real time. There would be plenty of people who would be able to help people in real time and even some who enjoy it.

Anyway this is all speculation and probably pointless to discuss as I don’t believe it will come into fruition. Would be very handy, though.

Maybe I’ll create this myself. We’ll seeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

[chrisburton]

It was definitely not a bad idea and I could see where you were going with it. But the unfortunate side is the vulnerabilities. Good luck and Chris made a PHP chat, just an fyi. Search “PHP V2”

[soap]

Hmm, ‘PHP V2’ yielded nothing for me. Well nothing along the lines of a PHP chat.

[chrisburton]

My fault. Try here

Read the update as well

[TheDoc]

There was a live demo of that chat room before, not sure where it went!

[chrisburton]

It was taken down for security risks, I think I read that somewhere deep in both posts.

[Chris Coyier]

I’m possibly down with the idea. Unfortunately I probably wouldn’t be able to hang out in there very often… I’d rather use some kind of hosted solution, but with the ability to embed it into a page here. Campfire isn’t going to happen. Little too expensive for a plan that would work, and even the biggest plan might not be quite big enough for large events if we wanted to ever do those. Embedding an IRC window might be a possibility. Anyone know of other good software for it?

[gno]

@ChristopherBurton, While I agree with you on the increasing security issues with the live chat, I must say that your argument with hackers bruteforcing passwords is not worse on a site with chat than it is on a regular forum like this. There should, no matter the nature of the site, always be a limit on login attempts – like say 3 failed attempts pr hour. Besides that, the most typical issues is XSS and SQL injections – not bruteforcing of passwords. The worst issue with live chats on sites like this is social-engeneering – people who, by cover of helping with an issue, gains access to certain protected areas, e.g. webservers or controlpanels.

@ChrisCoyier, I have not been able to find any decent IRC-webclient. Even though it is a few years since I was looking, I do not think that it has changed much. You would not like to have it running through your webserver, so you should look for a client-side solution. A java-applet or something similar. From my experience they never work well enough to be useable.

In my opinion you should rather create an irc channel on freenode.net and a link from the site + maybe a guide to setup a client and connect to the network from each of the mayor OS’s.

Actually, I have been looking for a IRC channel for guys like us, and I have not been able to find anything with a high enough skill and activity level. I would gladly help getting it up and running if there is support for it in the community. Even though I’m 8-9 hours in front of you – time-zone wise ;-)

[chrisburton]

@gno – It’s not really a debate of what is more dangerous than the other or more commonly done. I was just reflecting possible security risks in doing this especially after reading a blog post where @ChrisCoyier in the blog itself said something to the fact a person tried sql injecting one of the demo’s. There’s another where “noobs” try gaining access to his wp-config file, so its not about what is possible or not. I guess you can’t hold back on everything or should because of a potential threat but it does have to be in your mind when you make choices that could effect other people and in this case, a large amount.

I’m glad Chris mentioned using a chat that is already hosted. Userplane is probably the best chat itself. I mean, myspace used it, not sure if they still do as they have been bought out for a while now. Userplane has been restructured after AOL acquired the company in 2008 or 2009 so everything you were able to manipulate has been patched. I have tried java chats and what not but compared to Userplane, I have not seen much competition.

[soap]

Aha! @ChrisCoyier is interested. Would something like http://www.pjirc.com work?

[Johnnyb]

Sounds like a cool addition! Nice idea.

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