As part of several forums I have in the past used live chat scripts and IRC to try to bring the community closer. I have found though that they very rarely get used even on very busy forums. Is this a pattern that others have found? Has anyone successfully got a regularly active chat room on their site?
The chatroom is usually active at first, but then slowly dies, in my expierence atleast,
I had recently removed mine because of inactivity, the "novelty" wears off after a while. It i sbeneficial to bigger sites sometimes, because if you have several thousand members, this means you are guaranteed to have it busy at regular periods.
on the other hand, if it gets to popular, people will just bypass the forum and head straight to the chat, completely having the adverse effect than what it should have.
on the other hand, if it gets to popular, people will just bypass the forum and head straight to the chat, completely having the adverse effect than what it should have.
Exactly, this is why I am always weary of putting a chatroom on my forums.
I agree with everything stated above. Something I have found is that most chat scripts take a lot of server resources as well. I've seen a server go from almost not using any CPU to using a good 5% - 10% more when a chat script is running with a small load (40 people).
Johnny
Once I had an AJAX shoutbox at my forum, but I removed it. It was too buggy and placed a HUGE load to the server and nearly nobody used it. I believe that a simple shoutbox is good though. It makes the members a real community and stops some crap posters, because they say their crap in it
I have two chat rooms on my forum one for the community & one for private chat. We have certain days set for chat & usually several members will join in. I have found this is a good way for members to interact with eachother.