How to Create a Flash Chat

Creating a Flash-based chat room and adding it to your Web site is a great way to bring your Web site users together. People using Mac, Windows or Linux operating systems can all access a Flash-based chat room; as long as a Web browser has Flash installed on it, its user can participate on your chat room. There are many options for building your chat room, depending on how you choose to manage it.

Things You'll Need

• Web site
• Content management system or editor
• Flash chat software or code

Instructions

1. Choose a Flash chat option:

   FlashChat, 123 Flash Chat, FlashErize and ChatBlazer provide software meant to be integrated with a content management system. Some of this software is designed for specific content management systems, so choose one that works with yours.

   EveryWhereChat or EWC and 99Chats are free Web sites that allow you to enter some information, then produce a simple code that you can include directly into the coding on your site.

   As an example, if you want to add a Flash chat room to your myspace profile, one of the free options probably makes the most sense.

2. Launch the content management system you use to manage your Web site: If you have created everything from scratch, open the site editor.

   On the myspace site example, log in and click on the option to "Edit your profile."

3. Install your Flash chat software. Some software needs to be downloaded to a content management system where you can make adjustments directly to the options or code. Other software just needs you to enter some information into an online form to create the code; just copy and paste it into the code for your site.

   In the myspace example, open another tab or window of your Web browser and go to the free chat site you chose (Everywherechat.com, for example). Click on the button that says "Add Chat" and fill in the name of your chat room, your email address and other options, such as text size or themes. Click on the button at the bottom of the page that says "Create Chat."

4. Save the code and examine the created Web site, to see how it looks with everything else you have included. Make sure you have Flash installed on the browser you are testing with. Try to use several different browsers when testing the Web site, to make sure the site works correctly across many browsers. You may need to repeat Steps 2 or 3 to make any adjustments, so that your Flash chat has the right aesthetics.

   For our myspace example, copy the code from Everywherechat.com page and insert it into the relevant area of your myspace page. Click on "Save Changes," and click on the link to "View My Profile," so that you can be sure that everything looks satisfactory.

References

• ewc
• TUFaT.com: FlashChat Documentation
• FlashErize

Resources

• 123 Flash Chat
• 99Chats
• ChatBlazer