Hi,

EasySocial already have a messaging system.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but yes you can send messages to people... As far as I can tell there is no way to have chat like you would with Google chat or Facebook IM?

Hi,

We have integration from CometChat that does this.

I've just been doing a look for this...
I actually removed CometChat just before putting on EasySocial. I had CometChat on my site for the past 2 years and didn't really like its hit on performance or the other stuff that came with it.
I've just seen JBolo - anyone tried that and got some feedback about how it performs?

A simple chat without all the extra games and other external script loads would be really useful.

Right now there is no way to know if the other user posted a reply unless you wait for the notification to show at the top and then you have to refresh the page.

I imagine if ES conversation can show updates without refreshing, that would work, no?

Hi,

We will see if we can include this in the future.

As much as I hesitate to support it, chat is a very useful feature for any social network. Personally I say add it to the roadmap, but put it as a later item considering that there are more important things to add within the next few months. I'm not docking on the importance of it, but it's one of those items that may slow down the development of EasySocial right now considering that a good chat takes a lot of thinking to create. Also I would be in favor of making it a user preference so that site users are not forced to see it or get bugged by it.

For now I recommend FreiChat.

Hi Josh

I agree chat shouldn't be priority with 1.2 waiting.

ES does already have conversations so adjusting it for real time replies would take it to the next level without "reinventing the wheel".

Josh Lewis wrote:

As much as I hesitate to support it, chat is a very useful feature for any social network. Personally I say add it to the roadmap, but put it as a later item considering that there are more important things to add within the next few months. I'm not docking on the importance of it, but it's one of those items that may slow down the development of EasySocial right now considering that a good chat takes a lot of thinking to create. Also I would be in favor of making it a user preference so that site users are not forced to see it or get bugged by it.

For now I recommend FreiChat.

Thanks for that suggestion - I've put it on a test site and seems to work well. Any ideas on integrating with ES avatars?

Ask the folks of FreiChat if they are willing to integrate it with ES. If they sound hesitant, give me a link to the thread and I'll voice my support. In the past they had been pretty good with considering ideas.

I had a mess around with the custom driver for a while but also had a look at some other messaging systems. I decided to get a sub for JBolo in the end - it's got a one-click EasySocial integration, single component install, cron job to prune the messages database and is very discrete with a small bar at the bottom of the page. I haven't found a way to allow guests to chat, but I'm inclined to only have it available for registered users anyway, so that's working out well for me.

Hi,

Great to know that.