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Best Chat Solutions | Forum

Topic location: Forum home » Support » General Questions

Jim Dec 20 '18

Hi All,

New to the forum and I hope this finds the right topic thread.

We need a more sophisticated chat solution for our site. Imagine Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp and we are looking for something similarly engaging.

NEED:

***1:1 chat

***group chat

***chat rooms (password capable)

***post into chat images, pictures, stickers, giphys, etc

***a way to make the function feel organic on phones (mobile=priority even if in frames)

WANT:

***a way to push notifications to the phone.

***since mobile is nearly nonexistant on current oxwall we are running a desktop responsive theme in an iframe on an android app (looking for someone who can make a similar shell for mac phone app)

***so we would like a method to have chat push notifications to the phone to alert users of new messages. There's a push plugin but it doesn't work iOS mac phones. And I'm not really sure how to make a push work if it's wrapped inside of an iframe app.

I've seen people talking about Arrowchat and Cometchat.

Previously, cometchat was cheaper it seems but now they are on a subscription plan where I do like the one time fee of Arrowchat.

Are there other good active suggestions? Any thoughts on these two with current versions of everything? We finally have our site working well and are nervous adding a new feature but the users demand this.

Thanks for the help!

Jim

Leader

Patricia Zorrilla Dec 20 '18

I use ArrowChat and I do not recommend it.

It integrates badly with Oxwall: it does not understand the user roles well and the blocking of members is independent of the blocking of OxWall members.

The video chat does not work

The technical service is not there, they do not even respond.

There is no APP for phones.

There are no new versions or patches for the known bugs.

It consumes too many resources.

But CometChat is too expensive and I do not know another one.

OW-Ghost Dec 20 '18

i feel create chat rooms are old style but if feel you need it for your community then maybe try dave's plugin https://developers.oxwall.com/store/item/1348

i think that plugin support mobile and maybe you can ask him for custom modifications (like passwords capable)

then use the standard chat with the pwa plugin available in the store and you should get push notifications and great mobile support with stickers,smilys and other stuff

The Forum post is edited by OW-Ghost Dec 20 '18

Jim Dec 21 '18

Thanks for the detailed feedback on Arrowchat.

Are you on a shared server? We are on VPS and so I'm assuming we can afford the resources drain but if you're on vps too that would be concerning.

Not a lot of other good news to be had with your report :(

It sounds like it will function reasonably well with basic features of chat, group chat, tying together avatars from oxwall. That may be enough to get us going for the moment.

BTW, did you notice any probs with conflicts with other plugins or oxwall itself? We have had plugins break our setup while putting the site together.

Too bad there's nothing for phones.

Quote from Patricia Zorrilla Bcn
I use ArrowChat and I do not recommend it.
It integrates badly with Oxwall: it does not understand the user roles well and the blocking of members is independent of the blocking of OxWall members.
The video chat does not work
The technical service is not there, they do not even respond.
There is no APP for phones.
There are no new versions or patches for the known bugs.
It consumes too many resources.
But CometChat is too expensive and I do not know another one.

The Forum post is edited by Jim Dec 21 '18

Jim Dec 21 '18

Thanks Ghost.

You're right. "chat rooms" are old school. I'm looking for "group chat" similar to people's experience on whatapp or messenger or even group MMS texts. But in the premade chat world, I'm thinking that "chat rooms" are the closest I'll get especially for something that works with Oxwall.

Dave does such great work. Thanks for heads up on his chat room plugin. The one thing I like about arrow and comet is that the chat rooms integrate with the 1:1 chat areas smoothly. I'm trying to find a simple solution that will minimize risks for conflicts between plugins and oxwall itself.

Quote from OW-Ghost i feel create chat rooms are old style but if feel you need it for your community then maybe try dave's plugin https://developers.oxwall.com/store/item/1348

i think that plugin support mobile and maybe you can ask him for custom modifications (like passwords capable)

then use the standard chat with the pwa plugin available in the store and you should get push notifications and great mobile support with stickers,smilys and other stuff

Leader

Senior Developer Dec 21 '18

I made a Chat/Messenger App for mobile devices (iOS, Android and Windows) compatible with Oxwall, it is in testing mode right now, I will be releasing this App next year. It includes chat groups and 1:1 text chat, something like Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger but more basic for the first version (No video calls neither voice calls), I will add more features in next versions if people is interested in such app.

Right now I don't see anything like that in the store, that's why I made it. There will be 2 versions one which will use PHP and no extra server requirements, it can run in any server. The second will work on sockets to run faster and will require extra software installed on your server, compatible with VPS and dedicated servers only.

Senior Developer.

Jim Dec 21 '18

Senior, I think that would be great.

Would love to see it.

I keep thinking about the differences of "chat rooms" and today's "messenger" apps that allow for groups and the differences are limited. One of those differences would be that in messengers for groups, all data is available to all members whether they happened to be logged in at the moment that a message was transmitted or not. Otherwise, I'm struggling to think of differences. I hope that as you develop, you can build it out to compete more with messenger style apps.

It would be great if it could embed into a website but still push notifications to iOS & android..

Webster Molaudi Dec 23 '18

Hi SD,

Please do so, if possible it would be nice if we could have an android / Desktop / iOs app for that chat plugin as a standalone like whats app and syncs with the core oxwall chats / messages as well. I know you made plugins for the oxwall chats it will be awesome to make it work with those like the read message ticks.

@ Jim, you're right....Cometchat was the best and cheap until they went away with once-off fee and they are expensive :(. As for push notifications Senior Developer can integrate with Push Notification plugin which works will Onesignal.

Quote from Senior Developer

I made a Chat/Messenger App for mobile devices (iOS, Android and Windows) compatible with Oxwall, it is in testing mode right now, I will be releasing this App next year. It includes chat groups and 1:1 text chat, something like Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger but more basic for the first version (No video calls neither voice calls), I will add more features in next versions if people is interested in such app.

Right now I don't see anything like that in the store, that's why I made it. There will be 2 versions one which will use PHP and no extra server requirements, it can run in any server. The second will work on sockets to run faster and will require extra software installed on your server, compatible with VPS and dedicated servers only.

Senior Developer.

The Forum post is edited by Webster Molaudi Dec 23 '18

Young Ellis Dec 24 '18

I would like to recommend you ArrowChat which is a more effective PHP & JQuery chat software. It provides a simple solution to add chat to your Oxwall site. You can easily insert voice chat, video chat, text chat and chat rooms within few minutes to your Oxwall site.

Leader

Patricia Zorrilla Dec 25 '18

I do not see why so many requirements are needed, ArrowChat does not have them and it works perfectly. It fails to integrate well with OxWall since the interface is very basic.

Lack:

- Use the OxWall member blocks and not your own.

- By user role can chat or not by private and in the rooms.

- That the gifs are animated (Cometchat does it) and not only the first frame.

- For sites like mine dating, you can show age and city next to the nick in the chat rooms.

- Accessing by phone should not be so difficult, Arrowchat years ago had a APP that worked very well, but they removed it without explaining anything.

Quote from Senior Developer I made a Chat/Messenger App for mobile devices (iOS, Android and Windows) compatible with Oxwall, it is in testing mode right now, I will be releasing this App next year. It includes chat groups and 1:1 text chat, something like Whatsapp or Facebook Messenger but more basic for the first version (No video calls neither voice calls), I will add more features in next versions if people is interested in such app.

Right now I don't see anything like that in the store, that's why I made it. There will be 2 versions one which will use PHP and no extra server requirements, it can run in any server. The second will work on sockets to run faster and will require extra software installed on your server, compatible with VPS and dedicated servers only.

Senior Developer.

The Forum post is edited by Patricia Zorrilla Dec 25 '18

#10

San Jan 1 '19

Thanks Jim. Good Info. I dont know about Arrowchat but I own cometchat. Worked fine for me, used it on a social networking site I created.

thanks

kissanime.

The Forum post is edited by San Jan 2 '19

#11

John Feb 15 '19

@Senior Developer any idea when your plugin will be available in the store?

The standard Oxwall mailbox chat is very slow and buggy. Arrowchat seems like it's missing key features and Cometchat is really expensive

#12

Jean Smith Nov 21 '19

Hello I am also new to this forum but I think I can help you with what you need from your chat to start I want to tell you that it is not so easy to reach the level of the Facebook, WhatsApp or the Chat webcam found worldwide and anywhere available for that It takes years of code and test preparation try to reach that level and all you should do is try something more basic that is a tool with a much simpler code and see how you can improve step by step.

#13