adding a personal chat to etano?

[silverglade]

Hi, I don't think if I get users they will like the fact that I am using integrated skype and instant messenger apps instead of a direct chat with the person in their profile. Is there any way to get a direct chat with someone by clicking a button like "chat" in their profile? I couldn't get a developer id for some reason for the aol chat but was able to integrate skype and Yahoo IM.  But both buttons say "offline" always. Anyway, just wondered if anyone has a plugin for that other than the basic global flashchat addon which i couldn't get to work due to it lagging and is not a person to person private chat. any help greatly appreciated. thanks.

also, I don't think the users will know how to use the yahoo im and skype buttons. but they would easily use a button that just said "chat". with "user is online!" like most dating sites have.

[maverick]

It's going to be real difficult to find any free or cheap site instant messenger chat solutions that's efficient and already integrates into Etano.

The main problem with any PHP and/or Ajax based one-to-one chats or site instant messengers is they are rather resource intense, even if you have a dedicated server you will be pushing the envelope with 100 people chatting at once, a shared hosting plan will handle far less simultaneous users, in many cases 30 will be pushing the envelope.

Any free or cheap PHP and Ajax chat solutions that are often included in commercial dating scripts are going appear great and may function okay in the beginning, but they will have a lot of limitations especially on how many simultaneous users they can handle.

The reality is if you want a decent instant messenger for one-to-one chats it's going to cost you. About the only one-to-one chat that's really worth considering is http://www.cometchat.com/ that's very close to Facebook's footer chat, which is what most dating and SN sites are going with these days. You can start out with your own hosted solution of comet chat and as your site grows and you have more funds you can expand on it using their push services that can hundreds and even thousands of simultaneous users.

[silverglade]

wow thanks for that info maverick.  should I have a dedicated server? The $49 chat is super cheap!  maybe I could start with that and upgrade later? And I am perpetually broke so that works for me. But, I don't know php or at least I only know how to do site registrations, sessions, password recovery, and that's about it as far as my php knowledge goes. How would I integrate that chat into etano? please?

that chat looks great, thank you for showing me it. I just don't know how to integrate it with etano.

EDIT: I just noticed they have cheap "cometservice' which is probably what I will use, but I still don't know how I would get the cometservice chat into lets say a "chat with this person now" button on an etano user profile. any of your ideas would be great if you know. thank you.

[maverick]

Unfortunately at this time they don't have a ready integration for Etano, therefore you'd have to purchase their premium version which includes full integration.

[silverglade]

ok that's not too bad. considering it would cost me a ton of money for me to pay someone on odesk.com to make me a dating site from scratch. $249 isn't that bad. Thank you.

[HyerGrnd]

I've been able to integrate a java chat into etano. You can see an example at http://www.mynewdate.com/ I'm working on only making it appear when a user is logged in. But even if they try to join it won't let them until they have logged in. The configuration is done on my chat server. I will be happy to share the files that make this work if you want to try it. It would require that you register your channel on my IRC server, for which there is currently no fee. I can offer a branded solution that will display your domain name in the chat interface rather than mine for a small monthly fee. But the basic chat right now I can give out a few free ones to see what people think about it.