Quick Chat

License

Quick Chat is released under GPLv2 license.

Quick Chat Demo

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Description

WordPress has given a lot to the Linux community and to me personally so I've decided to give something back by making WordPress plugin for all of us to use. We all like to chat so I've decided to extend WordPress with quick and lightweight Ajax chat plugin. I've also decided to name this WordPress plugin "Quick Chat".

Features

Here are some of the features of Quick Chat WordPress chat plugin:

  • New in v4.10: Implement automatic private messages and chat rooms daily cleanup using WordPress cron API
  • Add PHP caching WordPress plugins like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache compatibility (See FAQ for more)
  • Add feature to configure which WordPress user role has Quick Chat moderator capability
  • Avoid losing CSS customizations after Quick Chat update (See FAQ for more)
  • Supports Quick Flag WordPress plugin to display country flag icons next to chat nicknames
  • You can set timeout for disabling updates to inactive user
  • Supports multiple private 1 on 1 chat sessions
  • Can filter bad words from your chat rooms
  • Admin users can easily download chat room transcripts
  • Besides gravatar.com avatars, local avatar plugins are also supported
  • Includes admin dashboard widget to chat with other admin users from your site backend
  • Has message input box character counter to limit message size
  • Allows admin users to instantly ban chat participant IP from chat
  • Has chat participants list for both sidebar and embedded chat
  • Site registered users can have their chat nicknames reserved
  • Site admins can reserve additional list of chat nicknames
  • Supports incoming messages sound notification for modern browsers
  • Supports unlimited number of separate chat rooms
  • User interface is translation friendly (translation template, Croatian, Italian, Czech, Romanian, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, Danish, German, Slovenian, Ukrainian, Estonian, French, Finnish and Welsh (some partial) translation files provided)
  • Integrates with WordPress user accounts to use login name as chat nickname
  • Comes with quality set of emoticons to spice up your chat experience
  • Saves your website bandwidth by sending AJAX requests only when there are new messages

Requirements

  • PHP 5
  • Requires at least: WordPress 3.3
  • Tested up to: WordPress 3.6
  • Current version: Quick Chat 4.13

Installation

You can find up to date installation instructions on Quick Chat WordPress.org installation page.

FAQ

You can find up to date FAQ on Quick Chat WordPress.org FAQ page.

Changelog

You can find up to date change log on Quick Chat WordPress.org changelog page.

Your donations

Quick Chat is open source web application created by single person and released under GPLv2 license. This means that you can use or even modify Quick Chat free of charge. Open source development and user support for my WordPress plugins takes at least few hours of my every day so if you find Quick Chat useful you can donate to help it's development. Thanks in advance.

Your feedback

Your feedback would be very appreciated. If you discover any bugs please describe your problem here or using Contact form and I will do my best to resolve it. Feature requests and comments are also welcome and I will try to fulfill any feature requests.

Quick Chat stable version

Quick Chat is hosted by official WordPress plugin directory so that is where you can get it:

DOWNLOAD Quick Chat 4.13 from WordPress.org

Quick Chat next version

If you have time and want to help making Quick Chat better you can test Quick Chat testing versions on your server and post feedback. Quick Chat version posted here will be uploaded to WordPress.org once it is reasonably stable.

Not yet available.

Changelog:

  • Not yet available.

Download:

  • Not yet available.

Quick Chat old versions

If latest Quick Chat version isn't working for you, here you can find download links to some of the older Quick Chat versions. I recommend that you use latest version if possible:

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1,481 thoughts on “Quick Chat

  1. mike

    Oh… and I see that the “last comment time” seems to be maintained at the the bottom of the chat. This is good. Is it new in one of the latest updates, or did I just miss it? 🙂

    Reply
  2. Marko Martinović Author

    @mike

    Hi Mike. This is what I had in mind. The separate options with labels like “Show date/time next to the message author name on sidebar chat” and “Show date/time next to the message author name on in-post chat”. The reason for two options is that the date time could clutter sidebar chat for themes with narrow sidebar. The current time stamp is timed at the last page refresh. I’ll work on that in the following days. Thanks Mike for your thoughts 🙂

    Reply
  3. jobay

    Hi been playing around with your plugin & just wondering how one clears messages or removes a message is there a log and or perhaps a way to reset the chat windows messages ?

    Reply
  4. Marko Martinović Author

    @jobay

    Hi. Quick Chat messages are stored inside wp_quick_chat table inside your WordPress database. You can use phpmyadmin to access this table and edit, delete or do whatever you want with the messages. I’m working on a interface for something like that for the next QC version 🙂 If you don’t use phpmyadmin, to reset chat you can set the number of messages to keep in QC admin settings to something very low and refresh page a few times than return that number to something normal like 300 or so. Happy chatting 😉

    Reply
  5. Conrad

    Hi Marko we are using simple chat for holding simple committee meetings for our fishing club. If someone joins the chat a little late and start to scroll up to see what has been said then there is a problem because the auto refresh jumps to the latest message. Is there any way to stop this so that a reader can scroll at their leisure and refresh either manually or when they have typed something?

    This would massively improve the functionality for us.

    Regards

    Conrad

    Reply
  6. Marko Martinović Author

    @joj

    Sure it is possible. But someone has to add appropriate code to enable that. I had planed to use gravatar support but in the some future versions. Anyway it is a nice idea, but how to squeeze avatar on sidebar version of chat? It could be optional for in-post version or something like that.

    Reply
  7. Marko Martinović Author

    @Conrad

    Hi Conrad, sorry your comment got stuck in spam filter 🙂 There are many requests and I don’t have much free time, programmers gotta eat, so I must pick the best. I understand you problems and I will try to do something about making Quick Chat history browsing easier. 😉

    Reply
  8. Marko Martinović Author

    @frizzo

    Hm… I haven’t tried this but I don’t see why it shouldn’t work, try calling my Quick Chat display function using echo quick_chat_display_chat(500); where 500 is window height 🙂 Please let me know if it works OK, thanks 😉

    Edit: I’ve tested by putting it inside the main WP loop and it works. Question is only where you put it and will it mess up your theme layout if you put it in the funny place.

    Reply
  9. Norbert

    It would be great to have an option to disable the emoticons at the bottom of the chat window, selectively for a page/post and within widget. Often times these are distracting and take up valuable space.

    Reply
  10. Marko Martinović Author

    @Norbert

    Hi Norbert, this is almost trivial to implement using new shortcode attribute for in post chat but it should be global for sidebar chat because all pages share same sidebar. I think this goes into the next version, thanks for suggestion. If you want to turn emoticons globally until your suggestion finds its way into Quick Chat you could hide it by adding “display: none;” inside “div.quick-chat-smilies-container” block inside “quick-chat.css” file. Cheers!

    Reply
  11. mike

    Hello Marko,

    I installed the latest version, and thanks for adding the timestamps to each chat message! This is really useful for me. 🙂

    It’s not a big deal…. But, I was hoping that it might be possible to move the timestamp to the same line as the username? I understand that in the sidebar this could be too long (but it would probably wrap anyway – right?), but in a full page view there’s plenty of room, and it would make the chat easier to read. At the moment, I have lots of 1 line chat messages, and now these message take 3 lines. Actually, on a full screen, it might be nice to have all of it on the same line. i.e.

    mike [May 22, 2011 – 19:59]: Just a test

    mike = Bold
    date + brackets = italic
    chat message = regular font

    …. or something like that ??

    Anyway, I know you have to take a lot of different things into consideration regarding the layout, so let me know what you think. Sorry man… we always want something from you!! 🙂

    Best regards,
    Mike.

    Reply
  12. mike

    @Marko Martinović
    Ha! Thanks Marko! 🙂 I can’t wait to try my “mike” version… But, I actually may have discovered a small problem with v1.5.1.

    After installing it, some other features of the my site seem to be affected. On pages where images used to be “animated”, the animation no longer works. For example, when mousing over an image, it used to provide a additional features – like following the image as a link to a post, or opening the image as a larger image, etc. Also, in some cases when mousing over an image, the image would move slightly, etc.

    After installing quickchat v1.5.1, these features seem to be broken.

    I reverted to a backup, and went through the installation several times, always with the same result. Of course I can’t be certain, but it does seem like quickchat is doing “something”.

    If there’s a way I can help you troubleshoot this, please let me know. I’d be very happy to help any time… when you have time! 🙂

    Best regards,
    Mike.

    Reply
  13. Marko Martinović Author

    @mike

    We will get to the bottom of this glitches, please leave your link here and I will take a look but tomorrow. I have two exams tomorrow morning and afternoon so it will have to wait until it is over. It sounds like some jQuery conflict and it shouldn’t be to difficult to track. Until then here on this page you have 1.45 version in the “Quick Chat previous version” section. Cheers!

    Reply
  14. mike

    @Marko Martinović
    Hi Marko,

    Ok. I downgraded to 1.45, and everything is fine. It’s really no trouble – I know you’ll take care of it when you have time! 🙂

    As for the site, I use this one for one of my kids, so the URL isn’t public and anonymous access isn’t permitte. Please let me know where I can send you the URL / Login details. I think you must have my personal email address – If you don’t mind, you can send me an email there when you have time and I’ll respond with the details. Sorry for the trouble.

    Best regards,
    Mike.

    Reply
  15. Marko Martinović Author

    @mike

    The thing is that I get around 10 Quick Chat related emails per day, but I will try to find your link and details. You can also use Contact form here on TechyTalk, what you enter goes straight to my mail inbox. Greetings, talk to you soon 🙂

    Reply
  16. mike

    Hi Marko,

    I’ll send you the details via the contact form – Good idea. … but, of course I have no expectation that you’ll have time to work on it. It’s no problem. I’m very happy with quick chat v1.45 anyway! 🙂

    Thanks again for the great plugin!

    Best regards,
    Mike.

    Reply
  17. Laurie

    Great job – I’ll gladly donate. Is it possible to have the option of removing the time stamps from each post? It would be easier to see the chat history without a time stamp between each one – for me they just take up space.
    Thanks!

    Reply
  18. Marko Martinović Author

    @Laurie

    Hi Laurie. This is not a problem, you just add div.quick-chat-history-timestring{ display:none; } line at the end of your wp-content/plugins/quick-chat/quick-chat.css file and puff, timestamps are gone 🙂 I’ll add option in the next version, it’s no problem. Enjoy.

    Reply
  19. cug

    Hi Marko,
    Yes. it’s 9 and I can’t figure it out. Saw it somewhere and i don’t remember where
    thanks

    Reply
  20. Marko Martinović Author

    @cug

    In the QC code you can do what ever you want, but if you don’t feel like editing Quick Chat files this is what you can do using GUI. You go to your WordPress admin dashboard, then click “settings”, then “Quick Chat” and you change “Maximum length of guest chat user name” to whatever you want. That’s it for guests. If you don’t trust your logged in users you can also uncheck “Allow logged in users to choose their chat user names” option so they are stuck with their loggin names. 🙂

    As for chat history it is saved inside “wp_quick_chat” table inside your wordpress database. It contains authors name, messages time, messages text and authors IP address.

    Reply
  21. mike

    Hey Marko,

    I just voted for “Who is online status info” in the poll for the next major release of quickchat. I think this would be a great feature… But so would would multiple separated chat rooms and the edit message admin interface. 🙂

    Thanks again for the great plugin… We have a lot of fun with it!

    Mike.

    Reply
  22. Marko Martinović Author

    @mike

    Hi Mike,
    I’m having fun making Quick Chat and I’ve also learned a lot 🙂 As for your problem with v1.51 when you find time you can try two files I’ve given to Conrad in this comment. There I’ve tweaked part of jQuery that I think could cause some conflicts with other plugins jQuery code. As for “who is online” it is really logical next step but I must think how to implement it without adding more overhead and without wasting bandwidth. Other stuff from the poll are also interesting and will find their way into QC sooner or later. 🙂 Now if only I could find a day or two to design and code this new stuff 😉

    Reply
  23. Marko Martinović Author

    @Idealminds

    Hi “whos online” is on the voting poll at the sidebar here on TechyTalk, and currently has most votes so it is probably going into the next version. I plan to squeeze runner-up feature from the poll also into Quick Chat 1.6 if I find time. As for ban IP this is no problem and will get into the next version for sure but for CSS design my methodology is to define as little of CSS my self so that QC takes style from your web page. For the time to the next major version we’re talkin about around one or two weeks but I have a lot of my other work and can’t make any promises. I’ve also fixed a few bugs like auto scroll when viewing history and I will put one or two minor versions for this “patches”.

    I’m currently doing Quick Chat “pro bono” in my spare time so if you want your features fast like in a day or two we can arrange something, programmers gotta eat and pay bills like everyone else 🙂
    Cheers!

    Reply
  24. Marko Martinović Author

    @danny

    Hi Danny, the feature you are asking for is variation of a feature “Multiple separated chat rooms support” and it is on the voting poll at the sidebar here on TechyTalk. Feel free to vote and if it is selected it goes straight into the next version 🙂 If not it will also go into QC but maybe little later 😉

    Reply
  25. Barry

    Hi Marko,
    I’ve installed your plugin but unfortunately it’s not working on my website. I’ve seen your article about the footer issue, but my template is ok – it has the following code in the footer:

    What else could the problem be?
    Best regards
    Barry

    Reply
  26. Marko Martinović Author

    @Barry

    Hi Barry, can you please post your web site link here if it is public, or send me your link using contact form here on TechyTalk.info if it is private site, so I could investigate. Unfortunately Javascript can be very picky so there are many things that can go wrong. Usually it is the footer thing or conflict with some other WordPress plugin. 🙂

    Reply

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