Ah, dunno how I missed that, maybe because it's 10 AM (est), and I was up all night Lol. But still, a plug-in added shoutbox at that top would probably be more "active" per say, and easier to use. Just a thought.
The chat always seems pretty dead every time I go there. Some months ago I recommended we have a setup like this: ...but it was turned down.
Yeah I didn't realize there was a page dedicated to the chat, and I've been on many forums that have used an IRC channel for their chat box, and VB plugin to have one at the top of the page. The ones on the front page always seem to be more active, due to their convenience of having to have less tabs open Could also have the option to make it universal on all threads throughout the forum so you could chat while you forum, but I think even one at the top of the home page would do the chat more justice imo.
It's inefficient, since every user on that page is connecting to that chat (every site visitor basically... Which is a lot of people). Because our chat is hosted directly on this server, we'd rather not do that... Not to mention it would: A. Annoy people who don't want to chat B. Cause an already fairly active chat (I think) to perhaps become overcrowded I mean fair play, I'm not saying don't do it, but perhaps this reasoning will help you understand why it isn't currently setup like that
Thought I would put my input in. What you could do is allow the shout-box to be disabled like the snow back in winter. And to prevent everybody to be connected add a connect button to it and a time out after 30 minutes or so of being inactive in chat. Don't know how hard that would be to code but remember a site I use to visit a couple years back had a set up like that. I do like the idea of the chat as you surf.
I pretty much agree with this. Besides we already have a website chat with a seperate RP Channel, and a livestream chat. I'd say thats more than enough.
Only registered users would be able to connect to the chat, and if you didn't even want an over-loaded amount of server stress on the site due to it, just set it so only people with 1-5 posts can see the shout box, this way only actual posters of the site would have access to it. At any rate, I've been on both ends of forums, from being an admin to a user, with some forums having hundreds of people online at once, not as many people would\do use it as you'd expect. Much like you can collapse certain forums, you would also be able to collapse the shoutbox at your discretion. Yes I originally only suggested it because I didn't see the "Chat" button above by Rainbow dash. I do under stand why it is set-up how it is though. What ever floats peoples boats, it doesn't matter to me. There are already vb plugins with shoutboxs that utilize the timeout option, which the admins could set at their leisure. Also, they could add it to only be on the /index, or on the whole forum wide cross, at any rate you'd be able to collapse it like you do a forum if you didn't want to participate.
BOTH the livestream and "RP/EPN" chats have a 'popout' button, most people utilize those in order to chat while surfing, myself included. It's actually better, seeing as you don't lose the conversation during page loads.
