New flashchat QnA

We’ve been getting a lot of questions about the new flash chat room we are testing / about to launch. So here is a page to answer some questions, get some feedback and suggestions.

First, a little info about the new chat room.

We are currently testing a newer chat room that uses flash and java to make a more interactive chat room for the users. It is currently testing, and we have had some hiccups that have delayed it, and we have added extra power to the server to run it. We have many new features already, and trying to implement more. The new chat room may not launch with all the features we want, and really, it may not launch at all depending on how hard it causes our server to run. Our chat rooms stay fairly busy, and with a lot of the new features that come with this new system, it just may be too much for our web server to handle. With more testing, we will know soon.

I know the whiteboard function is not working right now – if you try to open it, it will pull some kind of 404 error. I don’t think we need to whiteboard module – so the button for it will be removed soon.

Some of the features we are hoping to launch with include:

Users have option to register in the new forums, and be able to “own a screen name”  – this will keep people from impersonating others.

Different room levels and user levels, along with unregistered main lobby. If this works as we plan (fingers crossed) – we will still have a lobby area when people can pop in quickly as a guest and chat with others, but we will also have rooms where you must be registered to access. We are hoping to have 3 different membership levels as well. This will solve many of the problems that we have experienced with having a totally open, no registration chat room system.

Registration will be free. It will be spam free. Registration will require a valid email address, and you will get an email to complete the registration process. Any info that you add into your profile will be visible to the general public in certain ways through the forums, so if you are a privacy freak or paranoid, then be careful about what info you add into your profile. You can always private message people with details that you do not want to share in public profile.

Registration will give you the ability to post in the forums, send and receive private messages through the forums, setup a profile, and pics and stuff. Registration will give you access to the members only chat rooms, which means there will be less spammers, and less total dumb asses. This will make it easier for moderators to ban people who do not follow the rules. It will also give everyone an easy way to check and see if the person they are chatting today is the same person they were chatting with last week. There are many other benefits, I may make a video showing some.

I really hope to find a way to add a premium membership option. Current plans include having a way for people to pay a small fee and become premium members that will enable use of video chat with other members, and perhaps the 3d avatar chat options. I do not expect many members to choose that option. I think it would be a cool way for people to cam chat with other people to prove they are who they say they are, and will be a nice option for those who want to take things to another level. If all of these systems we are deploying will work together in the proper fashion to make this possible is yet to be tested, but it’s a plan we hope to get working.

We plan to launch with the ability for members to share pics with each other through the chat room system. I believe registered members will also be able to share pics through the new forums system as well. Registered members should be able to create a custom “avatar pic” or profile pic within the forums system, and hopefully that will integrate with the new chat room system, so when you log in, your custom avatar pic from the forums profile will show in the chat room. That’s the plan, hopefully it will work. With the new chat room users will not be able to change color of the screen name. I know that s going to piss off a lot of people, but I think if the custom avatar thing works, than everyone will be good with that for customization.

Hmm.. what are some of the other questions I’ve had? What other new features? Well we might have little flash games that people can play, and we might have to disable that feature, we’ll see. The new chat room has animated smileys – some cool ones, and we are working to add and customize those further. There is also a feature to play these cute little flash emoticon things, where you can send an animated flash cartoon type thing. My gf loves them, I think they are cool and people will get a kick out of them. Hopefully within 60 days of launch we will able to further customize those and add new ones. The current test page we have up for beta testers has the chat room as being a little bit smaller as far as usable space for the chat conversations. We will adjust that before the public launch.

Apparently the pms launch within the main chat room area, and this is a big complaint by the beta testers. Hopefully we can find a way to have a pop out window launch for pms in the future. Making the chat room bigger will help free up some space, we’ll see where this goes as we continue to test and adjust. I may post a poll to find out what sized screens most people are using, and the resolution most people are surfing the site with.

With the new chat room being flash, many smart phone users, iphone users, and ipad users will not be able to access it. I know, that sucks, it’s quite the trade off – lots of cool new features, but some users will have issues. The good news is that this new chat system makes it possible for us to add a stripped down mobile chat version that users basic html, and that may work for those users – will we add that feature? Maybe. Will it work as we intend? Maybe.

Moderators have lots of questions about modding too. Mods will not be able to enter the chat room as a user, and then type the mod pass to become a moderator, and then become a regular user. The mod password will not work with the new system. The way it is setup, when you log in with your username and pass, you are either an admin or super admin. We are working to further develop the mod system this week. Hopefully we will have it so that mods can kick and ban within the main chat room screen. There are lots of settings for us to adjust, and we need to further test. Right now when mods kick someone, they are locked out by ip address for 15 minutes. There is also an admin screen where mods can jump to and ban an ip addy from the system. We may give mods the power to mod within the forums as well, and we need to test how the bans effect the chat room and forums simultaneously or not. I can add the ability to have invisible moderators, it’s gonna cost on extra $100 – so we’ll have to see if we really want to do that. It may be easier to have mods use tow different screen names. We’ll see.

This page was written in a hurry, if there are mistakes or anything doesn’t make any sense, let me know. Also, a lot is up in the air with the new chat system, and everything here is definitely subject to change! If it takes up too many server resources,  or crashes a lot, or some things don’t work properly, then we may look to deploy a different system entirely – we’ll see how it goes. We may add or remove features as well.

The links on all of our pages of the site currently link to the old forums system, and we will not be using that one any longer. We have a new sex chat forums system ready for launch, and that is the place to register in order to save a screen name. We hope to update the site links within the next week or so.

So, what other questions, concerns, ideas, rants, issues, etc?