Does anyone use the shoutbox that ipbree has in place of a C-Box? Would there be any advantages/disadvantages to it?


Furthermore, does anyone actually use the portals you are given on most sites? I was considering using it and just wasn't sure what all it could be used for.

personally, i don't use ipbfree's chatbox because i just never have; i like to format my cboxes into the skin so it's jsut easier; particularly when i am not using a sidebar. it works well enough and looks fine with a sidebar, but yuh. XD

as to portals, i've rarely, if ever used them, and i've found that members tend not to either. that said you can always leave the option to have one up there and let them decide. :)

By portals do you mean an iframe with it in there?

Every time we tried a Cbox it got spammed to death within less than an hour. We just could not make it work. Why? Who knows. But without one we do well, and it's one less thing to moderate. Contrary to popular belief it isn't a "must have".

I don't like the chatbox IPBFree gives you, because it doesn't have time stamps. I love timestamps. I put them on everything possible. My MSN has time stamps. I may be wrong, but the IPBFree chat doesn't have timestamps. If it did, I might use it. I'm not sure -- does it have any advantages over something like cBox.ws?

I like portals. They are useful to see what's been happening recently, and they help me to not fall behind. However, I don't like them to be the main page that comes up when you go to the forum. It's always a little disorienting. If, like in IPBFree, you give members the option of using the portal, it's a much better idea.

We use the portal for DW's home page and my members love it. The reason why I know this, is because at one point we got rid of it so we could work on it, and we heard nothing but complaints that it wasn't there. We like it because it list the post that were posted since our last visit and other things like that.

Well, it's actually live posted once (as in, I didn't have to refresh to see what someone said) and it does have time stamps. The only problem I think I'd have....is that it doesn't show up on every page, just the forum index.

I do use Jcink's shoutbox system because it's integrated into the forum, so anyone who registers for the forum gets their username in the shoutbox already. Which is highly convenient for anyone who likes to use shoutboxes. Also because the shoutbox is tied to the forum I can more easily be rid of spammers by disabling guest posting in it through the admin control panel. As well I can have it displayed on the forum wherever I want by modifying the wrappers. And speaking of wrappers and the linked aspect of skinning... Whatever skin I set for the forum gets reflected in the shoutbox as well so whatever the forum looks like the shoutbox matches. Having the shoutbox tied to the forum is probably the best way to have it because of all the features it affords over other cboxes. Sure the other cboxes might have auto-refresh, but that's not a huge issue to me. Especially not if you have to pay to get that.

And just a note about the Jcink's shoutbox... It does have timestamps if you go to the actual shoutbox's page. (Open it in a seperate tab in Opera, right click and set it to refresh ever minute or so and then you have the auto-refreshing built in cbox for free. I don't know if Firefox has the auto-refresh option or not... But if it does then could take advantage of it like Opera's.)


As for portals... I don't have one set up yet, but maybe down the road I'll do some experimenting with Jcink's portal system and actually set it up.