How to Add IRC Chat to Your Website
Adding a chat feature to your website is one of the best ways to let your site's visitors interact with one another, ask you questions or even provide support to customers. While on the surface, adding the code necessary to drive an online chat room may seem like a daunting task, advancements in web development technology have made this process much easier.
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Things You'll Need
- Web site
- Web-editing software
- Hosting provider
- Internet connection
- Computer
- FTP program
Instructions
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1
Create your chat room with a free code generator such as Java Chat (see Reference 1). Begin by defining all of the basic features of your chat room, such as the name, the font used and the size of the chat client. Next, you will be able to configure the colors used in your chat room for things like the background, text and URLs. Finally, you will need to set some of the advanced options that determine how your chat room will work.
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2
Click on the "Generate" button when you have made all of your configurations. This will open a pop-up window that consists of the code for your chat room. Select all of the code in this window and copy it.
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3
Open you web editor to create a new page for your website. On this page, paste the code you copied in Step 2. Save the page when you are done.
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4
Create a link from your home page and other pages on your website to your new chat room. Save the changes to any page where you placed the link.
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5
Upload all of your new files to your web server using your FTP program. If you do not have an FTP program, FileZilla is an excellent, free application that you can use (see Resource 1).
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Test to make sure you chat room is working properly. Test all the features you have added to it. Once it is working to your satisfaction, let your visitors know it is available to them.
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Tips & Warnings
You can make changes to your chat room by modifying the code that was created by Java Chat.
Make sure that you post rules and etiquette for your chat room for your visitors.
You may need to moderate your chat room frequently to make sure there is nothing inappropriate taking place.
