A few bits about Chat and how you can access it.

Group Chat: You should see a new chat icon at the top right of the page which should pop you straight into a group chat area. The idea is that this is a general area for players to meet, greet, find people looking to start a quick game with or indeed just generally chat about stuff.

A few things to note:

1. Player names with spaces in will have the spaces converted to underscores when they appear in chat
2. You can chat privately to another player by clicking on their name in the right hand roster menu

If you want more advanced features like being able to set up a private chat with a group of players (e.g. during a game) then you'll need to install a chat client. WarGear.net is now a full XMPP (Jabber) server so you can use any of the multitude of available chat clients to connect to it, a list can be found here: http://xmpp.org/software/clients.shtml. I've been using Pidgin (http://www.pidgin.im) which seems OK so far.

Generally the settings you need to connect are:

Domain name: wargear.net
Username: Your player name with underscores instead of spaces if you have spaces in your name
Password: Your password
Protocol: XMPP or Jabber (they're both the same)
Resource: leave blank

Once you're in you can access the group chat by getting the room list which is from conference.wargear.net and joining the WarGear Lobby. You can use the client to set up private conversations with anyone else who is online.

Please feedback any issues found here.

Super cool!
Suggestions:

1. Time stamps on messages
2. Ability to change username color
3. Doesn't look very integrated with the site IMO, could there be a Chat tab and therefore keep the basic WarGear header information (and this would make it more noticeable)?  Perhaps even have a Sign-On to Chat on that tab and don't keep a backlog of the Chat, only keep what happens when you're Signed On (so you can move from the Chat tab, but don't get signed out), with a preference setting to always be Signed On when Active on the Site.  The Active thing may be a restriction for why the Chat/Sign On wouldn't work as well, but not sure.
4. Don't keep a backlog...see #3.
5. Some ability to get to the player's profile in the Chat
6. Why do I get this after about 5 minutes of being in the Chat?

Internal Server Error.

Disconnected.

Reconnect?

1. No difference in Work Mode?

Ummm, that's all I got for right now!  Very nice to see!

Ahhh tooltips have the time stamps...Hmmmm at that...
Anyway to remove the email link to lobby@confeblahblahblah?

Need to remove the Chat icon/ability if you are not logged in (or somehow fix it to allow Guests).

This is available for Premiums and Non-Premiums, that's intended I take it?

How long till a need for moderators, made it nearly 12 hours, I'm surprised :) (I'll volunteer :), looks like it stays up fine for me while on the network).

Clicking on a name on the right to PM should then allow you to type in the text box, currently you have to then click in the text box. Ability to reply (perhaps with /r or something) would be nice....
Oooh ability to tell with /tell as a PM would be cool!

Did this chat system thingy not work out? https://blueimp.net/ajax/

Perhaps only allow so many messages in a short period of time by the same person. So as this doesn't occur:
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Good points thanks all, I'll update.

The reason for having the chat window in a separate window was so you can have it open alongside the rest of the site - I'm pretty happy with how it's working for now but will see how it goes. As regards the Blueimp chat, I had a few concerns about it, mainly that it will result in very high bandwidth on the server side as the chat client pings the server every 5 seconds for new messages. This means with say 50 users in chat (maybe not now but not that far away) you could end up with the server being hammered 10 times a second for new messages - this will impact overall site performance. Having a full chat server means it's scalable, has nice management tools and allows full chat clients to connect which allows proper private messaging, private chat rooms etc. I'd like to set it up so that each game has it's own private chat room as well.

Thanks for volunteering to moderate Yertle... is anyone else interested in helping out with this? Basically it will just give you the power to kick users out of chat for 24 hours, if anyone is being really abusive then I'll then ban their account permanently.

I'll be in the chat most of the time just because that's what I do but I don't know if having and power is such a good idea since I don't really have the emotional maturity to use it responsibly. I would like to know if there is anyway that I can get a color other than Pink. No offense to Vataro, Wallace Wishmaster or StepOnMe, but I am just not a pink sort of guy.

Thanks guys - I've set you up, you should appear as a moderator when you log in. As I say, type /kick username to boot someone if they are being offensive and let me know and I'll ban them. I've tightened up the registration system so that you have to activate your account via your email address so that will block people re-registering to cause trouble.

I also disabled history in the chat.

Chat no there no more:

"Firefox can't find the file at http://www.wargear.net/chat/."

If you need more moderators for the chat I volunteer; I won't usually be on during the weekends but during weekdays I will try to keep chat open most of the time while I'm at work so even if I'm not actively chatting I can still check on it. If I'm not needed though, that's fine.

Also, how do I use Pidgin to connect to this? I can't figure it out :(.

My Moderator designation has been usurped!

RiskyBack wrote: My Moderator designation has been usurped!

Same here, was there first time logged in, then went out and came back and it's gone.

Weird... should be back now.

Vataro - Pidgin is pretty easy, just create a new account with the details as per my first post, have you got that far yet? Once you are there you go to Tools -> Room List and press the 'Get List' button. The conference server is conference.wargear.net, click 'Find Rooms' and you should see the WarGear Lobby. Double click to join. Phew!

Vataro wrote: If you need more moderators for the chat I volunteer; I won't usually be on during the weekends but during weekdays I will try to keep chat open most of the time while I'm at work so even if I'm not actively chatting I can still check on it. If I'm not needed though, that's fine.

Sorry missed this - thanks Vataro I added you too :)

Any idea why chat is gone for me? I'm guessing by the lack of out-cry that it isn't missing for anyone else?

I would also like to have the chat history back.  I think it keeps people more honest, and it lets you catch up on what you missed.

If I may make a suggestion to people, if you want the chat room to ever have people in it, you have to stick around longer than 3 seconds or maybe type something. People are never gonna be in it if everybody just logs onto it, sees that there is nothing going on and then log off. If you are gonna be around for a little bit, just keep the window open for 10 minutes and see if any chats start.

Not sure why it isn't working for you 11s... anyone else had the same problem? Have you tried another browser, also what browser are you running.

Chat history is expressed as x messages stored, what is the view on what x should be?