KMRL Blog

Tech Advice Needed from the Experts

I need some serious tech advice.

The station has a chat room. I didn't install it, it was installed three years ago and heavily modified to fit what we wanted. It's an extremely large and complex mix of java and PHP and one of those programs with a gazillion templates so making even a tiny change is like a scavenger hunt.

Up until recently I had a person I trusted and thought was a real friend who would handle the technical end if we needed things tweaked or added or modified. My own fault for allowing myself to rely so heavily on someone else but I really thought this friend was a keeper. Turns out I was wrong after ten years but hey, I've been wrong before and I'll be wrong again.

I cannot work with this chat room. It's got buggy things going on I don't know how to fix. I've been fighting for weeks now trying to figure out how to connect with it through Facebook which is something I see all over the net so it's doable. I want to add a stickam space for webcams and I can't even do that.

After getting frustrated to the point of breaking down in tears last night and calling Darkstar to whine about how dense I am and what a shit my 'friend' turned out to be, he came up with a really good idea - change the chat room program.

We're three years behind the latest version and given it's a free program it doesn't have things like login through Facebook or Twitter as a plugin or add on like so many others.

Start over with a new program that I'll be working from day one so I don't have to try and figure out what two code-masters did before me.

So I went looking for chat room programs and there are a billion. Tons. People sure chat a lot.

I need help. I know somewhere out there someone has a functioning chat room that does it all. We don't mind paying for the program if it offers the right features. I'm looking for things like:

Facebook/Twitter login capability
Stickam space capability (or some webcam thing)
Capability to have different rooms with different smileys or security levels. Keep the kids away from the raunchy stuff
Personal messaging
Moderation

I'm not concerned with video chatting. This is purely chat room chatting to go along with the shows on the station.

If anyone has any suggestions or knows of any solid chat room programs that offer what we're looking for, please leave a comment and put this misery to an end. I would be deeply appreciative for the rest of my life and you can be the official KMRL chat room hero!

Help the feeble, it's good karma.

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