How do I add "currently chatting" to vB3?

[Skaterscafe.com]

I was given a link showing how to do it but it looks like it was written for an installer, I'm not. I really need to have a little window or area that shows either how many or who is chatting in the chat room.

Can someone tell me how to add this to vB3?

Ray
www.skaterscafe.com

[Andy]

Hi Ray,

Here is how I did it...

Showing how many users are logged in

To show how many users are chatting in 123flashchat, you need to create a data directory under 123flashchat/. Then edit the fcserver.xml file to point to it like this:

<data-path>/path/to/your/123flashchat/data</data-path>

Next edit the vBulletin template phpinclude_start. This php template is used to include a seperate file, there are only comments in it to begin with, so add the following code.

ob_start();
require("http://www.yourforum.com/123flashchat/data/online.txt");
$online = ob_get_contents();

$online = substr("$online", 2, 1); 

ob_end_clean();

By doing the above, you have created a variable in vBulletin called $online that you can use in any template.

I call my chat.htm file which starts 123flashchat from the navbar area under the other menu choices. When a user hovers over the link the tool tip shows how many users are in the chat room. Here is an example of the code I added to the navbar template.

<a title="Current users: $online" href="http://www.yourforum.com/123flashchat/client/chat.htm"> Chat</a>