warning: will be switching chat room to IRC applet soon

[squarepusher]

With the increased traffic, we're starting to run into problems with the chat room's capacity. Unfortunately, EZBoard doesn't provide a way to up the # of users in a chat room, so we're going to have to go an alternate route.

 

I'm proposing a switch to IRC (Internet Relay Chat).

 

the drawback:

IRC does not use the regular web port (port 80), so if you're going to try to chat from work or some location where you're firewalled, you may have issues. IRC normally runs on port 6667 I believe.

 

the positives:

The server(s) that host(s) the chat are freely available, widely used, and can handle massive amounts of traffic. IRC is also really just a protocol, meaning you can use any IRC program you want (Trillian, ViRC, etc) to connect. This will also allow me to set up a "bot" to be able to do all kinds of nifty stuff like moderate, run trivia games, fetch stats for conversational purposes, etc, etc.

 

For those who have no idea what I was just talking about, the format of the chat room will change, and you will click on a different link which will launch a different chat app-let.

[ja002h]

Good idea Brian.

[brewstew2]

will somms be there?

[squarepusher]

Well, not somms, but his cousin, "battlebot".

[bork]

I can't get the current chat to function from work anyway, so it's not a big deal for me. Darn firewalls.