Well, I looked at alot of those PHP-based chat scripts, but I don't like any of them for several reasons.
1. They tend to lag. I hate the fact that you type up your message, press enter, and it takes a second for it to load.
2. Haven't found one with the "private chat" feature.
3. Free chat services are free for a reason, because they're very limited in what you can do, as an admin or a user.
Some of the advantages of using the very-expensive-saram.net-esque chat service.
1. Most people are familiar with the saram chat interface, and they'll feel right at home using it.
2. It's fast. Type up a message, press enter, and it's instantaneous.
3. Private chat feature is added.
4. Very powerful administrative tool.
Basically, I think advantage #1 is pretty significant. It's brand recognition...I can already see people going around telling their friends "Go checkout Ktown213's chat room, it's just like saram.net."
But, if you can find something truly better, I'm alllllllll for it.
Here's some of the features...
Personal Chat Rooms
Personal Chat Rooms take the visitor directly into a personal chat room unique to its Web page and not present by default in the list of public chat rooms available in the Chat server. This room has all the functionality of a regular chat room (pull-down menus, banner advertisements, etc.), and can be completely customized by defining over 170 properties as applet parameters on the Web page -- overriding the default applet properties' file.
Moderated Live Events
Moderated Events are used to host live events in an auditorium fashion with moderators, guest speakers, and an audience. All questions and comments from the audience can be filtered by the event moderators before being posted to the room.
Membership Database Support
VolanoChatPro has external database connectivity and can support any database. If you want to reserve members' names, or provide more secure authentication, the Chat server invokes 3 simple scripts that you would write to look into your database.
Chat Message Transcripts
Need to keep a log of the messages that occur in the chat rooms? The chat message logging support allows you to transcribe the conversations in your public and private chat rooms so that they're available for later use, such as posting the transcripts of a moderated event or interview to your Web site.
Membership-based Monitors
This features lets you identify specific members to be monitors, each with their own password rather than using the system-wide monitor password.
Server-side Event Reporting
You can write CGI scripts (in any programming language) or Java servlets which register with the Chat server for event notifications, for example, entering/exiting rooms, chat messages, monitor actions, etc.
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