Firstly - this is fun - however serious, this is also fun. The Bot at Pandorabots is completely programmable and comes with a large number of AIML modules which you can deselect or add custom modules to. That means your Bot has basic communication without further work, but you can stop it asking 'what are you wearing' (not what one wants on a site where we want to create a positive impression). It's also easy to take one of the small AIML files and rework it to address your own site-specific questions.
I also had the 'blank' problem on startup. I chose to ask the developer about it by email. I had a 'same day' response from the developer - impressive. In my case the .swf file was one directory lower so the php was changed to point correctly. Up it came instantly.
And did I mention that it's fun?
