Creating Chat Rooms

With VolanoChat, you can create a combination of default public chat rooms, dynamic public chat rooms and dynamic personal chat rooms (VolanoChatPro only). VolanoChat allows you to host chat rooms on remote web sites and create worldwide chat networks. Chat rooms can be customized with unique room names, languages, colors, fonts, and images.

Creating Default Public Chat Rooms

Default public chat rooms are generated from the rooms.txt file. In order to create default public chat rooms, enter the names of your rooms in the rooms.txt file. There is no limit on the number of default public rooms that can be included on the list. * Whenever the rooms.txt file is edited, the VolanoChat server must be restarted for the new default room names to be displayed.

Creating Dynamic Public Chat Rooms

Dynamic public chat rooms are created by adding the code for the VolanoChat Client applet -- a few lines of HTML -- to a web page. When someone pushes the "VolanoChat" button, a publicly accessible chat room will be created on-the-fly with the room name defined by the web page's code's "group" parameter. Chat rooms generated on remote web sites operate the same way as the standard public chat rooms, but these rooms are displayed only when someone enters the chat room from the web page that generates the room. These dynamic public chat room remain visible as long as there is someone in the room, or the person that created the room is still connected to the chat server. There is no limit on the number of dynamic public rooms that can be created.

The HTML applet tag for the VolanoChat Client applet looks like the following, where the parts you modify are shown in italics. All parameters other than the cabbase may be omitted in order to let them take their default values.

<applet codebase="http://hostname/vcclient"
        archive="COM/volano/VolanoChat.zip"
        code="COM.volano.VolanoChat.class"
        width=500 height=60>
<param name="cabbase" value="COM/volano/VolanoChat.cab">
<param name="monitor" value="false">
<param name="color"   value="#ffffff">
<param name="group"   value="Your Room Name">
<param name="text"    value="english.txt">
</applet>

for which:

codebase
specifies where you installed the VolanoChat Client files under your Web server's public access directory. The default value if omitted is the directory of the Web page containing the applet tag.
monitor
indicates whether to turn on monitoring capabilities for VolanoChat Clients from the Web page, specified by either true or false. When used with the correct password, the monitoring version allows you to kick users out of the VolanoChat Server or to ban them permanently from entering. The default value is false.
color
is the color you want for the background of the space used on the web page by the VolanoChat applet. You will most likely want to choose a color to match the background of your Web page. Use the same notation of #RRGGBB as your Web page's bgcolor attribute, where RR is the red hexadecimal value, GG is the green hexadecimal value, and BB is the blue hexadecimal value. The default color is white (#ffffff).
group
is the name of the chat room you want created automatically when someone enters VolanoChat from the Web page. You can create different Web pages for different chat rooms. People who start the VolanoChat Client applet can see all of the chat rooms available, no matter which Web page they come through. If you omit this parameter, no room for the Web page will be created, but people will still be able to join any other room in the Server.
text
is the translated text and properties for the applet. The default language is English, specified by english.txt. Instead of English, you can also specify french.txt, german.txt, italian.txt, portuguese.txt, spanish.txt, or any other language property file you specify.

Creating Dynamic Personal Chat Rooms (VolanoChatPro Only)

Dynamic private chat rooms are created by adding the MyVolanoChat Client applet to a web page with a few simple lines of HTML. When someone pushes the button for "MyVolanoChat," a dynamic private chat room is created on your chat server. Personal chat rooms generated from remote web sites operate differently than public chat rooms in several ways:

  1. Personal chat rooms do not appear on the main chat panel.
  2. Only people that enter from the web page that hosts the "MyVolanoChat" button can access the personal chat room.
  3. Visitors are prompted for their user name and profile directly on the web page.
  4. Visitors bypass the main chat panel and are taken directly to the personal chat room.
  5. Visitors are unaware of all other chat rooms operating on the server.

The HTML applet tag for the MyVolanoChat Client applet looks like the following, where the parts you modify are shown in italics. All parameters other than the cabbase may be omitted, in which case they assume their default values.

<applet codebase="http://hostname/vcclient"
        archive="COM/volano/MyVolanoChat.zip"
        code="COM.volano.MyVolanoChat.class"
        width=500 height=60>
<param name="cabbase" value="COM/volano/MyVolanoChat.cab">
<param name="color"   value="#ffffff">
<param name="group"   value="Your Room Name">
<param name="text"    value="english.txt">
</applet>

for which:

codebase
specifies where you installed the VolanoChat Client files under your Web server's public access directory. The default value if omitted is the directory of the Web page containing the applet tag.
color
is the color you want for the background of the space used on the web page by the MyVolanoChat applet. You will most likely want to choose a color to match the background of your Web page. Use the same notation of #RRGGBB as your Web page's bgcolor attribute, where RR is the red hexadecimal value, GG is the green hexadecimal value, and BB is the blue hexadecimal value. The default color is white (#ffffff).
group
is the name of the chat room you want created automatically when someone enters MyVolanoChat from the Web page.
text
is the translated text and properties for the applet. The default language is English, specified by english.txt. Instead of English, you can also specify french.txt, german.txt, italian.txt, portuguese.txt, spanish.txt, or any other language properties file your create.