BlastChat 
Completely authenticated chat entry, chat can be loaded only and only on your website.
BlastChat is the best chat hosting service designed for website communities from the smallest personal websites to the huge megasites who desire to provide their members and visitors with a superb chat experience.
Implemented as a Web 2.0 application and hosted on our servers, BlastChat delivers fast and reliable chat solution to your website without heavy load on your server, without worries about bandwidth and with no system level administration needs on your end.
You do not have to be a computer programmer or system administrator to implement professional chat. BlastChat installs in minutes, requires no coding on your part and your chat rooms can be up and running TODAY!
BlastChat is the perfect solution for general community chatting, online moderated interviews or teaching sessions, customer support or any other use you might need, whether you need to communicate with a single person or hundreds.
More about BlastChat features can be found at our homepage.
If you are thinking of installing a chat application on your own server, here are some possible drawbacks you may want to consider:
1. If your website is on a shared server, chances are that it will have difficulty handling chat traffic due to the heavy load incurred by chat which the limited hardware resources are incapable of providing. Most shared webhosting companies prohibit chat applications.
2. If your website is on a dedicated server but has limited memory and/or is not properly configured, generally these might have difficulty handling the traffic and load caused by chat applications, or could be completely crashed when out of resources.
3. If your chat application code and database queries are not properly and completely
optimized, chat can require 5-10 times more server resources then necessary.
4. If your server internet connection is not capable of the required speeds for chat,
or is behind have too many hubs, then all chat responses will be slow, resulting in a very poor chat experience for your users, most of which will be dissatisfied and may not return.
5. Problems might propagate with as little as 10 chatters, depending on your server’s
hardware and software configuration, current server load, refresh rate and other
variables, again resulting in a very poor chat experience.
Not to mention the prompt unmatched service! I have never had service like this from any module i have downloaded. He took the time needed to get this thing running the way i wanted! Thank you
Blessings be upon you and your great company.
BlastChat for the win.
Blastchat is a great component/module/plugin pack, once you're set up its very easy to work out and runs itself. I had a small 'bug', which I went to the forum to fix, the admin/developer saw my post within 20 mins, asked me for a URL, and come joined me on my site!
He diagnosed my version was out of date in seconds, and hung around whilst I updated it. This fixed the problem instantly, and my users DIDN'T EVEN LOSE THE CONNECTION whilst it updated!! Just a refresh, away we go.
I cannot thank him enough, and cannot recommend it enough.
One thing I'd LOVE to see - an IRC connector so we could self host! That would ROCK. Oh and an iPhone skin!
Give it a try, you won't regret it.
It has been a godsend to our business and our web site! Our members rave about the chat room, it never goes down or gives me problems, and when I email ChatBlast they respond in a professional and timely manner.
This is by far the best Joomla chat component out there and I would never even consider using another one.
Don’t waste your time and money with the others, just download this one!
The module is useless. It doesn't figure out who is actually in chat, but who is online on the website, then gives you a little light-up smilie if that user is in chat.
I'm getting pretty desperate for a chat client for my site, but not so desperate to continue using this one... sorry. I'm only looking because some of my users are having issues with jPFChat loading.
Dear Sir, let us respond to each of your paragraphs individually:
1. what you wrote is incorrect, we require that you create public access to BlastChat component, not to chat itself. The chat administration allows you to fully configure access to chat and rooms (disable guests, etc).
2. this concerns BlastChat WhoIsOnline module (which does not belong under this extension and should not be included in the review), but let me explain module functionality: module does figure out who is online, on top of it it figures out who is chatting. To present online and chatting members, it is natural to show all online usernames and indicate by a smilie usernames of members who are chatting. Of course, module configuration can be adjusted so that it only shows usernames of members who are chatting (not all online members) and smilie can be removed also. (So, module can do and does exactly what your complain about module uselessness was all about)
3. we understand your frustration and we are sorry you judged BlastChat too quickly without either exploring BlastChat features and options more deeply or consulting us about your website chat system requirements and needs. We are always ready and happy to assist in such requests.
To sum it up, based on your review we do not understand why only 2 stars vote would be appropriate as you did not list any real functionality problems. We hope you will take a second look at BlastChat and form new, hopefully better, opinion.
with best regards
BlastChat team
the best thing is the support! really good people are working for this extension, and gives the best support to users. im planing to susbscribe... thans you guys!
Users and flagged as inactive after a couple minutes of inactivity and there is no option to change this. It may be an option in the paid version, don't know.
No option to change the audible notification.
I left several messages in the support forum and received no reply.
I set my chat room up as 100% private and not published. Out of the blue, some guy from Bolivia starts chatting with me and informs me that the room is published.
I uninstalled for security reasons. It's impossible to know who had what kind of access to my site via this component.
I apologize that we did not update information here, announcing that we are in a process of beta testing our new web 2.0 chat implementation, that is only reason why you experienced some problems.
1. users flagged as inactive: you are referring to a module (not chat), this was due to a small error in our code, as well as small error in your configuration of the chat. It is working correctly now. Thank you for pointing it out.
2. you can turn on/off audible notifications (changing the sound itself is not yet implemented)
3. you left 1 forum message and sent 1 email to us. Because we are in a process of upgrading our website, forum has been disabled. But, we did responded to your email (twice) with no response yet.
4. joining blastchat network, your rooms are visible to chatters of other websites. We did not activate "access features" yet, i.e. options to disable access, these settings were visible in Config area by a mistake.
5. no one has access to your website over this component, they can only enter your rooms (but on other hand it is completely free with no limits during this period). We would appreciate if you would explore our BlastChat Client code before you post such an accusation.
If you respond to my email, we will be happy to go into details on the chat implementation, as well as help you set it up correctly, tuned to your needs (like we did for thousands webadmins before you)
Sincerely
Peter Saitz
So tonight I'm in the chat waiting around for a friend and who shows up? The designer, I thought I was in trouble or something, haha. He was just there to help and see how things were going. I told him my problem and in 1 minute it was fixed.
Great program great support, hell they make chat room calls. LOL. 5 big stars from me.
Seth
It installed no problem and when I ran into a small glitch because of another extension on my site, Peter answered my email within minutes and did what it took to get me setup... And on a Free account, at that.
Both the support and the extension are great and they are striving to make it even better.
When I happened upon BlastChat I liked the idea of not tying up my resources and simply embedding a client - but with almost granular management features from the joom backend and native to Joom 1.5 w/user integration and management too!
hm.. a while later I get a few notices about some spurious problems with the site. Apparently, the install/upload was slightly botched due to a connectivity local to my worksatation - didn't find this out till later.
I didn't flame or come off half cocked like the guy below, I posted a thorough assessment of my issue to the support forum satting that I had to be back up soon or I'd be forced to run a restore.
Well, I figure that's about it for a day or so, yet while I was idling in the BlastChat client a visitor popped in - Administrator!
um... Wait, that's me!!! Oh, it's a BlastChat admin, and it's been less than five minutes since my post.
The developer was not only prompt, but went ABOVE and BEYOND to fix my site's database and set everything up correctly! Within 45 minutes of noticing the problem we were stylin' again!
The guy in the review below obviously perceives his needs to be a requirement with a different model of implementation. So he wants to have the chat service running on the same box - that's kewl too, but I'm very happy with the BlastChat model - it scales seamlessly as you grow.
We're very happy with this product! Thanks Peter!
Kindest regards,
Bradley
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