How would I go about doing this? And how does bandwith suffer? Thanks!!

You might want to have a look at phpMyChat (http://www.phpheaven.net/projects/phpMyChat/), I'm currently checking it out.

It seems quite light on resources and bandwidth, and a snap to install.


Lats...

localized chat rooms will hit the server resources + bandwidth pretty hard.

perhaps you could check out a chat applet/script which connects to a remote IRC server, only, through your site (i believe there's one named JIRC and a PHP one i can't seem to find anywhere but would like to). that would certainly ease up your bandwidth+server resources trouble.

I'm sure there are a few lite scripts that are available .... providing you dont have hundreds of users logged on. Check somewhere around DHTML?

PERL, C++, JAVA
http://www.cgi-resources.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Perl/Chat/

PHP
http://php.resourceindex.com/Complete_Scripts/Chat/

I offered an IRC to WHT since we are IRC hosts and can do that. Maybe I should post that in suggestions

Chats are okay, but I wouldn't recommend it on a site for the simple reason that:

1. It will get abused
2. There is no ROI
3. You can't tap into it, it's an island unto itself

Really, the only good thing about a chat room is "cool factor". It's one thing to use it for support or LiveHelp, but another entirely to say "ooh, let's add a chat room, and some free email while we're at it".