Chat
 

What is wrong with it? Nothing loads up.

It is having issues. It is a CP thing.

Well shit.... so hard to follow the GDT with 900 people posting to it... ****ity **** ****.

Huh, didn't realize it was down. I can look into it, but it won't be today.

Bring back the is Charles done thread that was deleted.

What ???? How bout you just do your job around here and earn your check.

Should be fixed now. Somehow the main index file got deleted, but a simple re-upload took care of it.

So...turns out there's a security issue with flashchat, which really sucks because we don't have a lot of other easy options. Until we figure it out, though, chat may unfortunately not be an option during games.

I will miss you chat forever and ever.

One option is to just use some random free chat software out there in the world. We couldn't link it to vBulletin to pull in usernames and such, but it should work. Here's one I'm playing with.

http://www.chatzy.com/83514677519792

I suppose one advantage of that is that it should work fine regardless of the CP server.

Thanks for your work DaFace, no matter the outcome.

What is the current setup? 123 Flash?

What about AJAX shoutbox? MGC Chatbox?

Na, it's a shitty old flash-based chat room (appropriately called "FlashChat"). It's nice because it's one of the few free options that integrate directly with vBulletin, but it hasn't been updated since 2010 and has a known exploit out there in the world. We could technically downgrade back to an old version, but it's probably not worth it.

Really, for what we use it for, I'd bet we'd be fine just using Chatzy (or similar). It's pretty basic (not easy to "skin" to make it look Chiefs-themed). Rooms expire after 14 days of inactivity, but that would get us through the season just fine, and it's easy to re-create a room any time. Only downside would be the inability to keep banned users out or prevent fakes (like me logging in as GoChiefs for example). But...meh. I doubt that'd be a deal killer.

I looked at it, seems like a relatively simple solution to limp around with for a while.

I had edited my other post while you were responding, but I was asking about AJAX based vB chat mods like Shoutbox and MGC Chatbox as potential long-term solutions. Would they offer better security? Or, are they limited by the relative insecurity of JS?

I haven't looked into them much, but the usual issue is that we're running on vBulletin 3.8, and most of the more modern mods require vB 4.0 or later. If you see a 3.8 board out there running a good chat system, definitely post a link so we can check it out.

I went ahead and made the call that we'll temporarily switch to Chatzy. The link in the header will now take you there.

Chatbox is compatable back to 3.6. Here's a link to the post on vBulletin about it: http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?t=168992

Do you know of an active installation/demo of it somewhere? The one in the linked post doesn't work.

Here's one, I'll keep looking though...

http://h-townmadness.com/forum/index.php

I'll play with it. We'll see how it works.

I've got MGC installed if anyone cares to try it out.

http://www.chiefsplanet.com/BB/mgc_c...o=view_chatbox

Let me know if it doesn't work - there are a ton of permissions to set.

I've played with MGC for a bit, and I like it well enough to give it a try. The Chat link at the top has now been updated to point to it.

Let me know what thoughts you guys have on it. It has quite a few settings that I can tweak, so if something seems really annoying, let me know.

Seems like it works well enough for what we need. I kind of like that you can see chat as your browsing the forums, going in and out of threads.

Would be cool if it could be active on the pages within a thread too. Could be in GDT and Chat at the same time. :D That might be awkward and resource intensive, I dunno.

Thanks for the work DaFace, appreciated.

Yeah, we technically could have it on every page, but I'm not sure how that would impact server loads during a game when everyone is refreshing like crazy. We'll see how it goes this weekend (and see if anyone ever uses it more casually), then decide what to do with it.

Thanks for the work, DaFace. I look forward to getting back in the chat this weekend. That Raiders game would have been a lot more fun with chat working.

Is the Chat going to be down today ?

No.

Cool. Wasn't sure if the recent troubles had affected it too.

For some reason, the thread got moved to DC, but apparently (from essentially one text message from Kyle) we were hacked.

Slowdowns during the game aren't unusual, but the complete lockups we had this past week are.

thanks DaFace. you are DaBest!

10 years ago that shirt might have helped you get laid...

I can read what everyone else is saying but there is no place for me to type in anything. I have tried several browsers and shut off my ad blocker and still nothing.

Your account isn't setup right

What do I need to change?

Is your browser zoomed in at all? The box to type should be at the bottom of the page, below all the other messages but before the ad banner at the bottom.

While I'm here, my suggestions to improve chat:

1) Chat should auto-clear every night, or every so often
or
2) Put a date stamp on chat messages. Entering this morning, it's impossible to tell what day previous messages were sent.

Not zoomed in. just shows the messages and the ads at the bottom of the page.

Wonder if it is because I only have a few posts to the board?

Yeah, "new users" are restricted from posting. You should be good to go now, though.

1. Not supported in the software.
2. Technically we could, but every single message would have a date on it, which is a ton of clutter for what is a relatively small issue.