All,

Forum members will now notice a new 'tab' between 'Members' and 'User CP' - titled 'Chat'. Clicking on this new tab will launch the chat room. However, there are a few simple but important things to do before using the chat room for the first time.

I appreciate that the below may look a little awkward and potentially time-consuming, however, the vast majority of the instructions below only need to be completed once, before using the chat room for the first time. Future use will be a lot quicker, have far less (if any) prompts and the chat room itself should be relatively easy and straight forward to use.

Since the upgrade of the Chat Room to Verson 1.4, it is now not necessary to enter your username in your forum User CP. If nothing has been entered here, by default, the forum will simply parse your forum username to the chat server for use. If your chosen nickname has already been used by somebody else on the chat server, then (ordinarily) a number will be added to the end of your nickname.

Within your forum User CP, the IRC Chat Password (Optional) field is optional. The password that's entered in this field is for identifying your username on the chat room server - in other words, it isn't related in any way to your discussion forum password. Once you have successfully entered the chat room, you can then register (and reserve) your nickname with the chat server and then enter your chat room password here, within your user control panel. Again, this field IS optional. You can simply leave both of these fields within your User CP 'blank' - it is not necessary to register your chat room username with the chat server if you do not wish to do so.

The chat room itself is run using IRC and is coded around (a modified) PJIRC client, which is itself Java based. As such, you will need to have a 'Java enabled' web-browser to use the chat room. Most web browsers are already 'Java enabled', however, if your unsure, it's extremely easy to check by visiting the Java Website. Simply follow the link on the Java Website that states 'Do I Have Java ?'.

Ok, once you've ensured that your web-browser is 'Java enabled', you're now ready to chat.

Once you click on the 'Chat' tab for the first time, you'll be presented with the following message :-







Click on the 'Run' button to proceed and better still, check the tick box that states 'Always trust content from this provider'. That way, you'll never be presented with this message again.

It's also possible that any firewall that you have running will be suspicious about what your doing and may give you a warning. In order to use the chat room, you will have to allow it to connect to the internet. Here's an example of the default Windows firewall message when attempting to use the chat room :-







In this example of the default Windows firewall dialogue box, simply clicking on 'unblock' once means that this message won't be displayed again.

Now the chat room will open and start to load. Please be patient, especially if this is the first time that you've used it as it may take several seconds. A screen similar to this will appear :-







Once the chat room has loaded, you will connect to the IRC server using your default forum username as your chat room nickname or the nickname that you've specified in your user control panel. The chat room will now look like the below :-








Ok, your good to go !!

As you've already hopefully noticed, there is an area beneath the 'Users Online' area of the discussion forum which displays which members are currently chatting.

As this is a beta mod, most but not all of the commands that are available from the drop-down menus within the chat room work. However, anything that cannot be automated using the drop-down menus can be done manually using the specific IRC command.

If any of you have any questions, are unsure or become stuck please feel free to start a new thread within the 'Ask The Admin' board.

Enjoy.

Darran



NB Some common error screens and how to solve them.

Both of the bellow screen-shots are usually associated with an Internet Explorer web-browser. If you encounter either of these, it simply means that your web-browser is not Java-enabled. This is very easy to fix - simply visit the Java Website and click on the link that states 'Do I have Java ? and follow the instructions.