How to Make a Chat Room

Chat rooms are a fun, easy way to get visitors on your website interacting with one another. You can set up a chat room on your site for free with a Bravenet web tool. Just follow these simple steps.

Things You'll Need

• Personal or professional website

Instructions

1. Head to the Bravenet website (see Resources). Sign up for membership and register with the site.

2. On the top nav, click on "Web Tools." Scroll down to find "The Rest of the Best Web Tools" and the "Chat Room" web tool. Click on "Chat Room."

3. Now you can set up your chat functionality. You can choose to edit as many or as few of the features on this page as you want. You can go back and edit the features at any time.

4. Click on "General Settings," and enter your home page URL. Click the button "Test Your URL" to make sure it works. Click "Save Changes," then "Service Manager."

5. Click "Chat Keywords." Choose if you want to be listed in the Bravenet Chat Room Index. Create a searchable name for the index; this may or may not be the title of your chat room. Enter keywords that will help search engines find your chat room. Click "Save Changes," then "Service Manager."

6. Click "Look and Feel." Provide a description for your chat room. Choose your colors and fonts. Pick or upload title and background images. Click "Save Changes," then "Service Manager."

7. Click "Edit Text." Create a title for your chat room and write introduction text. Click "Save Changes," then "Service Manager."

8. Under Utilities, click on "Copy/Paste Code." Here you will see several choices for links your site visitors will click to enter your chat room. Each has a slightly different look and feel. Choose whichever version you want to use.

9. All you have to do now is cut the code and paste it into the HTML of your website wherever you want the chat room to appear. It's as easy as that.

Tips & Warnings

• Changes to the appearance and functionality of the chat room are all saved on the Bravenet site itself; they have no effect on the code. So you only have to add the code to your site once, regardless of changes you make to the chat room on the Bravenet site.

Resources

• Bravenet