Hi guys - long time lurker and first time poster so please be gentle!

I have been approached to provide chat room services to a number of websites who do not wish to maintain / install their own (down to many reasons including ToS of some providers)

My question is, after many hours being confused seraching Google, what would be the best way to approach this?

I am thinking of getting a dedicated server to host whatever software I need to get this running, but was looking for advice on what software would be the most stable and easiest to maintain as well as being easy to 'plugin' to other sites, be they forum, CMS or plain HTML pages.

Software does not have to be free / Open Source as long as it does what it says on the tin!

Look forward to any advice or pointers you may have.

Cheers
Ryan

You can spend a weekend learning about IRC. There are some great PHP and Flash interfaces for IRC now-a-days.

Or, you could hire a programmer to build you a chat system.

Either way, I would get a dedicated server if I were you, so your operation is 100% self contained. Just make sure you know how to manage it, or hire a server manager.

:D

Hi,

There are a couple routes you could go down for this.

One is, as markfrompf said, to set up your own server and run an IRCd or other chat software on it. This would mean that you would be responsible for keeping the software and server secure and backed up.

The other is to form a partnership with a current IRC network and so that you can use their network, this way the network, software and server security is looked after by someone else.

I have a few contacts with some small IRC networks if you would like to go down the hosted route. If you do then you can PM me for some details.

I hope this helps
Paul

Have you considered outsourcing it so you didn't have to manage anything, and I'm sure it'd be cheaper than your own dedicated? I've seen some companies out there besides live person.

welcome to wht.


worth a look: http://www.addonchat.com/

I looked at it, it;s alright

www.chatrool.com

I was looking around for the simplest and off-server solution and ran across Chat Roll. All you need to do is goto their site and setup a chatroom. The chatroom stays online at all times and keeps all messages stored until they get overwritten. So when someone logs in, they see the previous chats that were going on.