Ajax Chat Integration for Joomla 1.5 native Overview com_ajaxchat integrates Ajax Chat from into Joomla 1.5 natively. Joomla-Users are mapped to chat users with the following rights: Joomla guest -> Guest Joomla registered user -> Normal user Joomla special users -> Moderator Joomla super admin -> Admin Installation Install the extension by using the Upload Package File option in the Extension Manager. Select the downloaded package archive, then click Upload File & Install : When installation is finished, you should see something like this:
At this point, there might be some warnings about language files that could not be installed. This is normal when you do not have the corresponding backend core language installed and can be ignored. The important messages are: Subinstall: Successfully installed module Ajax Chat Shoutbox Module and Install Component Success. 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 the new Ajax Chat submenu in the Extensions 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.
The next step is to add a chat page to your site. Open the main menu, add a new menu item and select 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 ar 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 configuration (Adding a shoutbox on the frontpage, adding a Chat-Log page for administrators and adding additional channels & emoticons) are optional.
Adding a Shoutbox With the Shoutbox module (mod_ajaxchat), 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. 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). Managing Channels 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.
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.