Drupal

[pallen]

I know this is the PHP forum, but I couldn't find a better place for this question (I don't CMS as an option).

So, I'm using Drupal to build out my site and run have into an issue with the "chat room" module. The problem involves inviting another user to a chat. User A can invite User B; the option to do so is implemented in the chat. User B, however, never actually receives the invite. It just doesn't show up any where. After the invite, the chat will show that User B has been invited, but it User B will not be aware of that unless he/she navigates to the site for some other reason.

I'm sure this is not a module issue. Chats are to ubiquitous for such a glaring bug to remain unfixed. It's more likely, therefore, that I'm doing something wrong. I just don't know what that is. Hence, this post.

Is there a block that I have to create to alert the user to the invitation? Is that a separate module that I must add? I'm using Appbar, but that doesn't show the invite. Anyone know where I'm screwing up here?

Thanks in advance.

[Kraai]

I am just thinking here, should both users not be online and logged into the drupal site, at the same time, to be able to receive the chat request? If both users are logged in at the same time, and the chat notification is not visible, then yes, there is something short on the plugin.

I am just thinking here, for the possibility the users was not logged in at the same time?

[pallen]

Kraai,

As it turns out there is a notification window that shows up when User B is invited. The thing, though, is that the notification won't show up until User B refreshes the page or navigated to another page. For me, that just doesn't make any sense. User B may simply leave the site and never know that he had been invited to a chat.

As far as being logged in, I haven't tried inviting a non-logged in user yet. My guess is that nothing would happen. Or maybe they would be notified once they log in, but that probably is too late.

From what I've read online, there doesn't seem to be a decent chat module for Drupal yet. I had to remove the one I was using because of the invite issue and another bug that occasionally prevented the chat from pooping out into it's own window.

Thanks for the reply.

[Kraai]

I must admid, with the experience I have of getting chat integrated with some CMS, there always is something or the other not working as it should be, like what you described, or if everything seems to be fine, users "fall off" when the chat gets a bit busy, but have not reached the max number of chatters at same time yet, etc... etc.

I found that, if you realy want to have a chat interface as part of your website, the way it has the least problems, is to host the chat on a different domain, and only host the chat there, resulting in a seperate database, meaning the users have to sign-up there as well.

I hope there are some chat experts reading here, that may have good suggestions towards your problem.

Good luck

[Kraai]

In hindsight, If the user has to refresh to see the invite, there may be a solution by using auto-refresh coding on your pages.

[pallen]

I thought about hosting the chat somewhere, but I'm not thrilled with the idea of forcing users to register/join another site especially for a service that has been around for longer than I can remember.

Auto-refresh if a good idea. I may give that a try. I've never actually used it before. I have one concern, though. If a user is in the middle of writing a comment or something similar and the page refreshes before the comment is posted, will everything that the user has typed be lost? I imagine it would. Any way around that?

[Kraai]

I think, you should only apply the auto refresh to the page/section that needs to produce the notice to the user, and not the whole site.

For example, in Facebook, the toolbar at the bottom only, auto refresh to see your messages and friends, and not the whole page.

Here is a simple auto refresh code:

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5" >

Where the attribute http-equiv="refresh" calls for refresh of the page and

the attribute content="5" sets the time for refresh.
This code comes into the <head> section of the page/part of page you want to refresh.
I will set the time to 60 (for 60 seconds) because that gives time for a page to load fully, in cases where visitors have slow connections.

Please note, that if you auto refresh a whole page, your hits wil increase with each refresh, and if you plan on selling advertising on your site with tariffs based on hits, you will be misleading the advertisers.