How to Embed an IRC Chat

Visitors can chat on IRC without knowing anything about it.

Internet relay chat clients can often seem arcane and confusing to users who aren’t yet acquainted with IRC terminology and commands. Instead of providing IRC server information on your website and expecting visitors to figure it out on their own, you can embed an entire IRC client on a Web page so your website’s visitors can chat on IRC. Dedicated IRC clients can access the same IRC server and chat with people using the embedded IRC client.

Instructions

1. Create and customize a Mibbit widget at the Mibbit Widget Manager page. Mibbit widgets host the IRC client on Mibbit’s servers; the Mibbit IRC client appears in an inline frame on your page. After customizing your Mibbit widget, paste the HTML code Mibbit gives you into your Web page’s HTML code. Mibbit widgets use HTML, so your website’s visitors don’t have to install any plug-ins.

2. Use the LightIRC IFrame Code Generator page to generate a custom LightIRC iframe. You can customize the IRC server LightIRC connects to as well as the LightIRC frame's appearance. Copy the HTML code beneath the preview after customizing it and paste the copied code into your Web page’s HTML source code. LightIRC uses Flash; users of iPhones, iPads and other devices that don’t support Flash can’t use LightIRC to chat.

3. Download the PJIRC package from the PJIRC website. Extract the downloaded file and upload the “IRCApplet.class,” “irc.jar,” “irc.cab,” “securedirc.cab,” “pixx.jar” and “pixx.cab” files from it to your Web server. Include the following HTML code in your Web page’s source code to embed PJIRC, replacing “irc.example.com” with the IRC server you want to use:

   <applet code=IRCApplet.class archive="irc.jar,pixx.jar" width=640 height=400>
   <param name="CABINETS" value="irc.cab,securedirc.cab,pixx.cab">
   <param name="nick" value="Anonymous">
   <param name="name" value="PJIRC User">
   <param name="host" value="irc.example.com">
   <param name="gui" value="pixx">
   </applet>

   Your website’s visitors must have the Java plug-in installed to use PJIRC.

References

• PJIRC; Readme; Plouf

Resources

• Mibbit: Mibbit Widget Manager
• LightIRC: IFrame Code Generator
• PJIRC: Downloads