Add an IRC Chatbox to Your Website!

by nutsandbolts_64

49K514

Intro: Add an IRC Chatbox to Your Website!

   As usual with my other instructions, I'll explain how I got to this point. I was scrounging around the farther reaches of cyberspace to look for a suitable I.R.C. client with a GUI interface to work with as part of my project to connect everyone I know since we've just recently graduated. After 5 days, I started to give up, then I went back to the I.R.C. Chat-room wanting to talk to some of the regulars there. Before I typed a single word, I noticed a little button on the upper left. That little button put chat-rooms on 2 of my websites. It isn't the most sophisticated, but most people can access it quite readily (which would be what I wanted at the time: Simple, Accessible, Free).

STEP 1: Short Intro About IRC

(If you want to get down to business, go straight to step 2)

I.R.C. is short for Internet Relay Chat . From the name it's obvious what it is. This is how it works (today anyway): You download a program that will enable you to use I.R.C., this is called an I.R.C. client. The client asks you to select a server of your choice. Once you have connected to that server, you have the option to open up a channel list (a list of channels in that server) either with a text-based command, or a button (depending on the user interface of your client). You may connect to one (or more) channels and chat with the other users in there. You may want to search around for the list of commands as they can be useful to you yourself in the future, but for my purposes this is optional, as I'm only telling you how to add I.R.C. capabilities to your website.

Also, before I forget, you need a little bit of HTML knowledge for this to work, otherwise you wouldn't have any idea where to stick the code (to be explained).

STEP 2: Grab Your IRC Client

You're not gonna download anything here, since the client I chose is web-based. Go back to the I.R.C. chat-room  and go to the bottom of the page. I was talking about a little button on the upper left corner, click on that (it's a bit small, so refer to the image). 5 options will drop down from that, click on "Add web chat to your site". What follows will be straightforward. The window will change and it will ask you to predefine a couple of options. Just click next, configure your settings, next, configure your settings, next, etc.

STEP 3: Do I Have to Explain This?

Well, apparently I do. It's gonna produce a little line of code, similar to a YouTube embed code. Actually, that's really what you're doing, embedding a chat-room into your website. If you know HTML, what you'll have to do is obvious, just paste it in there to your liking. Now in case you're using a web host which uses a GUI interface, select and drop down the "custom HTML" option (along those lines) and paste the code you have into that. Now you're done! To use it, go to

12 Comments

CunD1 7 years ago

could somebody tell me how to send traffic from IRC to filma24hr.tk?

SimonW26 8 years ago

IRC chat rooms can use a lot of server resources, however, if you have a VPS or dedicated server and only the one website hosted on it, IRC is fine. Most chat sites start with zero chatters as most websites start with zero traffic. The hardest part of getting a chat room busy is getting people in that will stay until someone else comes in to chat, however, if you are just starting, there will most probably be no traffic or chatters. Getting people into the chat on your site at the same time is the key, so a hosted solution which allows a basic embed of a chat room onto your site that already has chatters is the best way for newbie chat sites. As more people visit your site, you can then upgrade to your own hosted version of any chat room. If you want an easy way to embed a good video chat room, try this code here

http://1freechat.com/add-a-chat-room-to-your-website-blog/ one piece of code gives you a fully video chat room or a chat bar similar to Facebook.

yawar.nawaz.92 9 years ago

National Aquaculture Group NAQUA http://www.naqua.com.sa

pfg23 11 years ago

Hi, promising article, but I can't find the "little button" on https://www.instructables.com/community/Instructables-Chat-Room. Your first paragraph says it's in the upper right. Step 2 says it's in the upper left. When I go to the page I see a "Go" button, some unwrapped text (I'm using Firefox), a menu of social network badges, but no "add chat" button. Any ideas where it went?

nutsandbolts_64 11 years ago

Oh sorry, my bad, it's supposed to be in the upper left corner. Hold on, you see a "go" button? Mind giving me a screenshot of it?

pfg23 11 years ago

Here's the screenshot. There appear to be some formatting problems with the page in Firefox. Not so much in Chrome, but still no button.

nutsandbolts_64 11 years ago

Oh, no, not that, I meant the chat box at the bottom of the post, just above the comments.

pfred2 12 years ago

Calling an IRC channel a "room" is kind of ignorant. AOL has "rooms" if you'd like one of those. Well, AOL did at one time. I'm not so sure what they have today. But IRC still has channels, not "rooms".

nutsandbolts_64 12 years ago

Kinda ticks people off if I called it a "chat-channel", don't you think?

pfred2 12 years ago

Ragging on gnoobz about calling IRC channels rooms is a time honored tradition. I just thought I'd get my digs in on you is all. The fact remains IRC doesn't have rooms, but channels though. It usually goes somewhat like this:

(the following is a dramatization the reality is typically far harsher)

<newbie> wow this is a great room!
<IRC-reg> IRC has channels, AOL has roomz you stoopid gnoob
<reg_idler> newbie: Yeah you llamah.
<IRC_neo> wholly idler even said something
<Kling0n> heh, he called the chan a room
<b0g> oh this one's gonna wind up on my site, just you watch...

Trust me you don't want to end up on b0g's web site. Luckily for the world it doesn't even exist anymore. Seems they ran afoul of some animal rights people and the FBI shut them down or something. I'm sure a similar site has taken its place now though.

I guess I need to update my bookmarks :) You really shouldn't call IRC channels rooms either.