Electricians Chat Room

[Dan]

Do you think we need an electricians chat room on here? We used to have one but it rarely got used. Perhaps have a chat system in the arms again? I think that's where it was before.

 

[Pete999]

Do you think we need an electricians chat room on here? We used to have one but it rarely got used. Perhaps have a chat system in the arms again? I think that's where it was before.

Yes why not Dan

 

[Dan]

Sometimes it can confuse new members, who try to post in the chat room things that should be in threads. And the one I'm looking at isn't cheap to use on a few forums. So wondering if anybody particularly remembers if the old one was used much and whatnot? There are a few chat options knocking about but some are really poor. Wondering if a full-on chat system that has categories in it and private messaging and mobile styling etc etc would be cool and actually get used. Or whether it'd be one of those things that dies a death once the novelty wears off lol

 

[Richard Burns]

I think it would not likely take off as the timing has to be correct for two people to be available simultaneously.

 

[Dan]

What about this kinda thing: ArrowChat - JQuery/PHP Chat Software and Facebook chat plugin for websites - https://www.arrowchat.com/

It is sort of like a facebook chat / messenger thing.

 

[hightower]

I echo Richard's thoughts.

 

[Dan]

Yeah I thought it might be the case. We've had various chat rooms and shoutboxes before now and I'm sure when we transferred over to this forum software that not a single person has asked where it has gone. Unlike the thanks button. lol

 

[hightower]

If you're going to do it though, why not implement something for free to see how it goes and see if it'll be worthwhile. There's a good few decent open source systems out there:

Creating chat rooms everywhere - phpFreeChat - http://www.phpfreechat.net/
Web Based Chat Demo - eStreamChat - http://www.estreamchat.com/demo.aspx
Firechat - open source chat built on Firebase - https://firechat.firebaseapp.com/

 

[Dan]

Open source ones are generally easy to hack. Plus once people got used to one, as always, they'd had it changing lol But yeah, a trial is imminent I think. I'll just give it a 6 months bash and promote it etc for a couple of months and if it becomes annoying for members or just doesn't seem to be working, remove it and pretend it never existed in the first place. Like the thanks button.

 

[hightower]

Open source ones are generally easy to hack.

As someone who has worked in IT since the age of 18, with most of my qualifications being in computer programming, I can only say what a load of tosh.

 

[Dan]

As someone who has worked in IT since the age of 18, with most of my qualifications being in computer programming, I can only say what a load of tosh.

They're the most with zero-day problems and often updates to known bugs are going to be slowly rolled out. If we ended up using a free open source chat forum that hasn't been around for long we are going to attract some exploits. I can assure you. Every now and again we get whoever the script kiddie that was DDOSing a while back try to find weaknesses. And I can almost guarantee that if one of those free open source chat rooms have known exploits that haven't been fixed yet, they'd be using it to try and attack the forum.

So I'll pass on open source myself.

The developer-backed businesses that sell chat rooms tend to be working constantly on closing loop holes, and if some entry point is found on our server because of their software, then I'll report it as a bug and it'll get fixed before I enable the add-on again. Which will be a lot lot quicker than some open source software even if it is established.

Worth noting I haven't actually looked at the links you've posted, so perhaps unfair to comment and generalise like that, but I tell you what, the experience I've had this past couple of years dealing with attackers of a few types online, I'd just rather go with a trusted business, who's reputation is going to be tarnished if it has known exploits they don't fix quickly.

So perhaps not quite tosh, but I'm sure as somebody who's been in the industry since you were 2 years old or whatever, you'll understand where I'm coming from eh

 

[hightower]

I run multiple public facing open source systems that have ~700 concurrent users for most of the day, all without issue.

 

[Dan]

View topic - Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability - phpFreeChat - http://www.phpfreechat.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4732
I don't understand this. Perhaps you do? - This is on their own forum.

http://theconversation.com/firechats-revolutionary-use-will-not-be-revolutionary-for-long-326447
Seems this can actually be used to DDOS a site.

I gave up after that. Kinda confirmed my first thinking.

I can find a few for arrowchat too mind, but I bet they're fixed now.
ArrowChat External.php Lang Parameter Traversal Local File Inclusion Exploit - http://www.securiteam.com/exploits/5CP391F95W.html

 

[Dan]

I run multiple public facing open source systems that have ~700 concurrent users for most of the day, all without issue.

I wouldn't really be able to comment without knowing what they are etc. But I too run a bunch of stuff that are public-facing and do have problems lol Lots and lots of them. And I don't want more.

 

[The Ghost]

We already have such a facility in conversation, and electricians arms if we want to chat more privately. I can't see the need for anything further imho.

 

[Dan]

Yeah I guess we can kinda do all that anyway. Perhaps it's just me trying to play with more toys eh