Member Avatar for Lalainealb

Hi,

I have a website and quite a few members have suggested that adding a chat room would be a great idea.

I'm searching for something I might be able to integrate well into my site.

Has anyone tried RumbleTalk or C-box?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Robin_7

Dani AI

Generated

A few practical points to narrow this down before picking a solution — several useful angles were already raised by (server stack matters), (open-source script), (CMS plugin option) and (hosted/embed widgets). Decide first whether you want a hosted widget (fast to add, less control) or a self-hosted system (more work, full control). Also be explicit about authentication: should site login map automatically into chat, or will chat use separate credentials?

Keep requirements concrete: required max concurrent users, message persistence (are past messages searchable/archived?), moderation tools (mute/ban/report), mobile/responsive UI, and privacy/retention policy. Those constraints will determine whether a lightweight widget is enough or whether you need a WebSocket/real-time backend and storage.

Implementation checklist and quick troubleshooting tips:

  • Prefer a real-time transport (WebSocket) with a long-poll fallback for older clients; make sure your load balancer and proxy support ws and sticky sessions or use a backend that supports scaling (e.g., pub/sub).
  • Integrate auth by issuing a short-lived session token server-side and validating it on socket handshake. Example pattern:
    const token = 'SERVER_INJECTED_TOKEN';
const ws = new WebSocket('wss://your-site.example/chat?token=' + encodeURIComponent(token));
ws.onopen = () => ws.send(JSON.stringify({type:'join'}));
  • Hardening: sanitize/display-encode all messages to avoid XSS, rate-limit writes to prevent spam/DoS, and log moderation actions for audits.
  • Test on staging: simulate concurrent users, check reconnection behavior, and verify TLS/CORS issues.

If you post your server stack (PHP/Node/ASP/WordPress) and whether users are authenticated, contributors here can suggest concrete packages or integration steps tailored to that environment.

Recommended Answers

All 5 Replies

Member Avatar for Member #120589

Many solutions have client (e.g. javascript) and server (e.g. PHP, ASP...) aspects. We need to know what server-side setup you have. Many solutions have an Ajax-type setup. Some may be Comet based. Some use websockets or node.js

What have you tried so far?

Member Avatar for DJBirdi

If your chat page is behind some sort of authentication, the easiest solution might just be an open source script like Ajax Chat from Sourceforge, however as diafol suggests, you'd have to clarify your requirements. Things like once the user is logged in, their username should auto-log them into the chatroom when they come to that page must be considered.

Member Avatar for <M/>

By any chance are you using WP? If so, there are already numerous plugins that are free and already built for it.

Member Avatar for Member #120589

Had a look at Rumbletalk. Seems OK, nothing special, but they want $14/month just for a chat box! Having used the demo, I wasn't too impressed.
c-box has a free version, but the number of missing features doesn't make it very attractive. The premium version is only $2/month. It looks pretty rough though. I'm not sure why those two were suggested to you.

A chat solution that I have used is http://frug.github.io/AJAX-Chat/screenshots.html although not for a few years, so it's probably even better now. It's free too and used to be really easy to set up and customize.

You may want to talk to Dani, she built the chat feature on Daniweb from scratch, so I believe.

Edited by Member #120589
Member Avatar for Robin_7

You try Live2support live chat. It offer live chat for website. Visit on Live2support website login on it and get code past in your site then the live chat start on your site.

Edited by Robin_7
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