Universal Ajax Chat Integration for Joomla 1.

5 native

i- Overview:

By default the chat features and recognizes all users of a joomla site.
The different possible accesses are as follows:

IN Joomla In the Chat

Joomla Guest Guest

Joomla registered user Normal user

Joomla special users ( Manager,

Moderator
Administrator)

Joomla super admin Admin

ii- Setup:

The first thing to do, is adjusting the global options. You can access the global options dialog by
selecting either Manage Channels or Manage Emoticons from Universal Ajax Chat submenu in the
components menu and then clicking the Parameters button in the toolbar.
The global option dialog looks like this:
Move the mouse over the field names to see tooltips, explaining the various settings. For a quick
initial test, you probably want to leave all settings at their default.

Configuration option:
Default theme : The default theme to show for first time users.
Default language : The default language to use for first time users.
Emoticon directory : The directory to use for emoticons (below
images/com_ajaxchat/emoticons)
ChatBot name : The name to use for messages generated by the system.
Allow private channels: If enabled, users can create private channels.
Allow private messages: If enabled, users can send private messages to each other.
Allow nick changes: If enabled, allows users to change their nick name.
Allow message delete: If enabled, allows users to delete their own messages.
Allow guest logins : If enabled, allows anonymous logins.
Allow guest names: If enabled, guests are allowed to change their own nick name.
Generated guest prefix: When generating a new guest user name, the name starts with this
string.
Enable socket server: If enabled, a separate server is used. Make shure, you enable this only
if that server is running.
Socket server name: The host name of the socket server.
Socket server IP: The IP address of the socket server, used to connect from server side to
broadcast update messages.
Socket server port : This defines the port of the socket server.
Socket server ID: This ID can be used to distinguish between different chat installations using the
same socket server.

The next step is to add a chat page to your site.

Open the main menu, add a new menu item and select Universal Ajax Chat Window for the type:

On the following page, you can set all options for the component again, but this time you have the
option to use the previously adjusted global settings.
There is one important setting in the Basic Parameters which must be set: At the field Logout
redirect, choose a menu item where users are redirected to when clicking the Logout button in the
chat. If you forget to set it (or set it to the chat page), then users will not be able to leave the chat:

Having added a chat menu item, you are basically ready to try it out.
All further configurations (Adding a shoutbox on the frontpage, adding a Chat-Log page for
administrators and adding additional channels & emoticons) are optional.

iii- Adding a Shoutbox

With the Shoutbox module (mod_Universalajaxchat), you can add a shoutbox on your frontpage.

The setup is quite easy. In the module manager, click on the Shoutbox module, this opens the
module's
Configuration dialog:
In this dialog, enable the module, make shure that it is assigned to your frontpage only and
(important!) select the previously created chat page at the Main chat page option.
This enables the shoutbox module to pick up all configuration settings from the main chat page.

iv- Adding a Chat Log page:

For administrative purposes you might want to add a chat log page. This works exactly like
creating the main chat page, except you have to select the Main chat page (just like with the
module).

v- Managing Channels (or chatrooms):

Select Components->Ajax Chat->Manage Channels to invoke the following form:

In this form, you can add new chat channels (rooms), set the default channel and set permissions for
each channel. After initial installation, there are three predefined channels Public, Registered
and Special. If you plan to use a public shoutbox, make shure that your default channel is open to
the public.
 vi- Managing Emoticons:
The default folder for emoticons is images/stories/com_ajaxchat/emoticons. In Joomla's media
manager, you can create new folders below this folder and upload icons into them.
Each folder then can be used as a separate Icon Set. After uploading, you then have to assign
codes to those icons. In order to do that, select Components->Ajax Chat->Manage Emoticons to
invoke the following form:

If you have created sub folders, then you can select one of them in combo box at the table header.
After that, you can start adding new emoticons. For each emoticon, select the image and it's code.
Finally, you can set the order of the emoticons.
By doing this, you specify the order (from left to right) of their appearance in the toolbar of the chat
window. After completing a new folder with it's emoticons, it then can be selected for use in the
global parameters or the parameters of the menu entry for the chat page.