IO-Chat

[io-chat]

1.1.11 Update Release

Update 1.1.11 is a little weird, and I don't mean because of all those nasty 1s, cluttering up the version schematic. No, this update both takes us a step forward, and a step backwards. Let me explain.

Once upon a time there was a gross sync-based hard-drive writing database structure called "Laziness". My plan for this was simply to cut out the need for some external system and keep straight the core. I believed it would give me more integrity, more experience. To be fair, it did teach me a lot, but most important of these lessons was that there is absolutely no reason to burden yourself with a custom-build database. It is a massive waste of time.

I could ramble forever on the issues, but I'm going to instead present the solution: MongoDB. That's right, we're going mainstream. IO-Chat is now using MongoDB to store accounts and because of the cluttery mess of the old system, it took quite a while to refurbish the codebase. The result, is a much more reliable (and sexy) database.

Unfortunately, I have not yet integrated rooms into this, so there is a chance that created rooms may have data loss. Fortunately, all you have to do is re-create the room. There are no real estimates on a timeframe but I've never seen dataloss happen more frequently than once every few weeks.

DONE:

Existing rooms have been deleted.

Accounts made during the last update have been lost.

Premium and VIP rights are temporarily disabled.

DarkShell/LightRoom crossover bug fixed. ( no more black textbox )

Registration fixed.

Version Support: Edge/12; MSIE/11*; Chrome/48; Opera/36; Firefox/45;

[io-chat]

1.1.10 Update Release

This update's focus is almost entirely on server moderator features, so from the surface it may not look like such a big deal, however a lot of massive changes were made to the server code resulting in much better server performance, memory management & several server moderator features.

We've brought back server kicks and bans for those naughty users who don't quite like sticking to our terms of service. We are pretty lenient, but it is still mandatory that you abide by those terms. The Server Control Panel has received several new upgrades to better equip your trusty server mods to make sure everything runs smoothly, and the community stays strong!

Furthermore you can now Report users that are bothering you. This will inform us that the user is a bad egg, and we can take actions to prevent them from harassing other users. It is still advised that you Block the user ( Right next to the Report button ), they will have no idea that you have blocked or reported them, they will believe you are still receiving their messages, but you will not see them.

Finally, a new batch of sounds have hit IO-Chat. You'll notice new sounds on private messages, name mentions as well as on connect and disconnect from the server. They are a little more mellow than previous sounds to keep from becoming annoying or too distracting.

[io-chat]

1.1.9 Update Release

Today's update is more about performance than features. I've spent a few hours chipping away at the clunky codebase, reducing it by over 2,000 lines.

First off, I've completely removed the dependent library "Jwee" which I only ever used for cookies - there was a time when I dreamed of some nifty animations, but it simply isn't worth that extra weight. Secondly, it seems there were some unused functions lurking within the codebase, they have now been removed. This allows the server less to give, and the client less to load. These are good things.

A few tweaks to the site bring a user count to the home page, you can now see how many users are currently logged in, though this doesn't mean they're in any rooms or even chatting at all. The dark room theme has been updated to show genders, and the reputation text shadows have been thrown out, they were ugly anyway.

A few bugs have also been fixed, and some configurations changed. Room owners can still be banned, technically, but when they re-join, the system will notice that they are the room owner, and let them in anyway, so you can’t be locked out of your own room for 24 hours anymore!

The home page is now organized by active users, instead of total users. Rooms with more activity will be prioritized over rooms with mass amounts of idle users, this ensures that the top of the list is a room that is interesting, not just full.

Finally, an added "news bar" has been added to the top of the screen to inform you of the happenings around the chat. You can completely ditch this bar by clicking [x] at the right of it, but i suggest clicking the center of the bar first to see what it wants.

DONE:

Removed JWEE library from client.

Removed redundant functions from codebase.

Added # of users online to home page.

Room owners will now evade bans.

Configured rooms to sort by active users, not total users.

Removed text shadows in dark theme.

Genders now visible in dark theme.

Added "news" bar to top of site.

Version Support: Edge/12; MSIE/11*; Chrome/48; Opera/36; Firefox/45; * Mention sound still buggy:-(

[io-chat]

1.1.8 Update Release

This update is a prime example that looks are barely a fraction of the work that goes behind development. Though 1.1.7 brought us a lot of very interesting features, It is guaranteed that this update will yield a much greater reaction.

If you can’t tell for yourself, the home page has changed a little bit. I’ve modernized the design for a more efficient look, though it still functions mostly the same. Under the hood, we’re now using a static page vs. a JavaScript-generated page, making development much easier and preparing us for the search engine coming in 1.1.9. For now, we adjust to the visual changes. When you click the home button, the home page will refresh, otherwise it will refresh automatically every 60 seconds.

With this update a few configurations have been changed. The popular room list has been extended to hold 10 active rooms, allowing more rooms to be seen. Your Joined history has been extended to 25 rooms, and the maximum amount of rooms you can join is now at 5 rooms.

And last but certainly not least, you can now change the site theme in your menu by going to "Shell Theme" and selecting either Light or Dark. This will effect context menus, the tab bar, and the home page!

Also, Internet Explorer allows you to change your theme now. Neat!

DONE:

Re-designed homepage using Flat UI.

Extended popular room list to 10 rooms.

Extended room join history to 25 rooms.

"Shell Theme" settings added to menu.

Shell themes Light and Dark added.

Extended room limit for registered users to 5 rooms.

Version Support: Edge/12; MSIE/11*; Chrome/48; Opera/36; Firefox/45; * Mention sound still buggy:-(

[io-chat]

1.1.7 Update Release

In this update I took action upon the decision that I was bored with IO-Chat’s styling, so I decided to change some things around. The chat themes are now room-based, so instead of a global theme, each room can have their own themes. This feature is still in alpha, so room owners will not be able to create their own themes until the next update. However, you will notice that some rooms do have their own styling, like Roleplay or IOHQ. You can disable room themes by selecting either “dark” or “light” in the Theme selection in your settings. “Native” needs to be selected to see room themes.

And speaking of settings, we’ve completely gotten rid of the top navigation. What was previously known as “My Account” can now be found in the bottom right corner. This frees up more space for the rooms, and looks relatively nicer on mobile.

Though these seem like big changes, the biggest change is actually under the hood. Now, we are officially encrypting user passwords. This means that not even I, having physical access to the server, will be able to see your password anywhere!

Future minor patches of this update will include more elaborate settings, for now I’d like to focus on making sure everything introduced is stable :-)

DONE:

Parse links in MOTD.

Parse links in About.

Implement room-specific CSS.

Cleaned up file serving.

New mentioned sound!

Made messengers also play mentioned sound.

Encrypting passwords on registration.

Encrypting passwords on login to match them.

Fixed mention sound no-play bug for desktop.

Added “global whispers”.

Added “local whispers”.

Silenced bot commands from showing in room.

Added Server Moderator alerts.

Created new Dark theme!

Added ability to ignore room themes.

Removed topnav.

Moved “account” options to bottom of screen.

Made modal boxes fill screen on mobile view.

Made tab-bar scrollable on mobile view.

Version Support: Edge/12; MSIE/11; Chrome/48; Opera/36; Firefox/45; * Internet explorer does not allow theme change or mention sounds. * Mention sound still buggy on mobile. :-(

[io-chat]

1.1.6 Update Release

I’ve been quite busy with this update, a lot is going into it from both visual features and server changes. Most importantly (imo), this update allows the Room Control Panel to be updated separately from IO-Chat’s version scheme, and can be done so without a server restart. This means that you will not be disconnected from the chat for Room Control Panel related updates!

The reputation system has been changed to be more room-based, I believe this allows chatrooms to grow independently and keep from forming an opinion of a user based on their activity in a different room. The RCP’s Statistics Panel will display the highest ranking reputation. Unlike the previous draft of reputation, this update provides reputation updates in realtime. When reputation is changed, everyone will see it.

Moderators can now remove messages from the chat for everyone to hide any unwanted profanities. This is done by clicking a message, revealing a “Remove Message” option. Other options are general user options like ignore, private message, etc.

And for my personal favorite of this update comes the underscore standards. Usernames now can only contain 1 space or underscore, which can only be within the name, not at the beginning nor end. Though other users will see this underscore, the registry will not. This means that you can put an underscore anywhere in your name when you login and you will still be using the same account. If your name is TomSmith, and you login as Tom_Smith, you are using the same account, the system is just displaying it differently to other users. This also means that if you register any variation of TomSmith ( Be that Tom_Smith, T_omSmith, etc ) nobody else can register any underscored variation of that name.

I hope you enjoy this update and I look forward to bringing more RCP updates very soon!

[io-chat]

1.1.5 Update Release

I am happy to release 2015’s first update, 1.1.5. In this update we’ve rearranged some things in the client. Reputation points are now moved to the userlist instead of being posted with each message, and voting can be done by clicking a name on the userlist without private messaging them. This new pre-messenger screen will give you the option to ignore the user, message the user or change their reputation. For room mods and admins, the pre-messenger screen offers you the ability to mute, unmute, kick or ban a user. The private messenger interface itself has changed quite a bit as well. We have completely ditched the empty userlist box that held the ignore button and reputation points to make more space on mobile devices for conversations.

The /admin command, which opens up the room’s control panel (RCP), is now available for room moderators. An admin can specify a moderator in the “roles” panel and that user will be able to access it the RCP. Moderators will be able to view every panel on the RCP but will not be able to write to it. changing settings or moderator roles will not work, but access to the userlist, banlist and statistics panel is still pretty useful. This will be expanded on greatly in 1.1.6.

The “Users” panel in the RCP has a very handy feature now called IP Catching, this will tell you if there are multiple users using the same IP in the room. Though the RCP will not give you their IP, you can be assured that if it tells you they are using the same IP, then that means they are either next to each other, in the same building, or perhaps even the same person. That’s up to you to investigate and act upon yourself, but if you ban one, neither of them will be able to come back. ( at least not under that IP ).

Perhaps the most waited for update on IO-Chat is Chat History. This allows you to see up to 50 posts ( including join/leaves ) that happened before you joined. No longer will you drop in unaware of the ongoing conversation at hand and feel lost and afraid. This will only be stored however if there is someone in the room. If everyone leaves the room, this history will be cleared completely as this would be considered a room close.

Finally, Theme are available for chrome users now in your profile menu. I am looking forward to adding more themes regularly, but will not be opening up support for other browsers for a while.

[io-chat]

1.1.4 Update Release

Today we prepare ourselves for the future of room management. 1.1.4 presents a brand new control panel system for room administrators to better manage their room on IO-Chat. You are now able to manage your general Settings, Roles and Banlist, and will soon be able to edit the appearance of your room as well. Further into this update, we've got a new room approval system. When your room is created, it will be reviewed by a server moderator to make sure that it is appropriate for the main listing. Even if your room does not get approved, you will be able to share it with your friends via URL, it just won't be displayed in the main index. Rooms with inappropriate language in the title or description will be marked as private. A more behind-the-scenes update is the server control panel. Server Moderators will now have access to a few new server management features now like the room approval system & some neat site statistics. The new control panel is pretty minimal, for now, but it is built to be built upon. New plugins will be released overtime for these control panels once it is proven to be stable.

[io-chat]

1.1.3 Update Release

The 1.1.2 release laid the framework for room creation, and 1.1.3 is finally delivering it. With this release, any registered user will be able to create and edit their own chat room on IO-Chat.com. This has been long awaited and has taken quite a bit of effort on my end to deliver properly, so I sincerely hope you enjoy it. Each registered user is able to create 1 room as of now, but in the future I expect to allow users to create multiple chat rooms.

The room control panel ( accessed by typing /admin in your room ) is very minimal. You can change basic settings like the room name, motd, description and about, and also assign moderators. Moderators have to be registered to be assigned, so encourage anyone you trust with that power to register their name on IO-Chat so that they can help you moderate your room.

As I mentioned before, this system is very minimal, expect updates frequently, and please be patient until then :-)

[io-chat]

1.1.2 Update Release

Quite possibly the most obvious feature seems to have taken the longest. A year has passed since I “promised” that Auto-Reconnection would be implemented… better late than never, right? And what a beauty it is.

But Auto-Reconnect isn’t the ONLY feature in 1.2. Along with this, comes a wonderful system I call Idle-Out. Idle-Out is a system that displays who’s not chatting actively, so that you can more easily tell rather or not a room is active. When a user is idling, their name will become faded, and they will be placed at the bottom of the list. This happens after 5 minutes of not posting any messages. Each room has its own idle list, so just because you are active in one room, doesn’t mean you’re going to be shown as active in other rooms. Also, when you join a room, you are given 60 seconds to say something. If you do not, you will be shown as idle just the same as the 5 minute activity limit.

Another smaller, but important feature, is the message buffer. The message buffer keeps IO-Chat performing well in your browser by limiting the amount of messages that can be shown on the screen. After so many messages scroll by, the top message will disappear. This limits the amount of memory IO-Chat uses, and prevents any potential lag.

Finally, I’d like to announce that there is a new color added to the staff scheme: Orange. Orange signifies developer status, and is a server position, which means this status is displayed in all rooms. If you see a user with an orange color and background on their name, this is because they have contributed a reasonable amount of code to the development of IO-Chat. Along with this addition, Server Administrators will now wield a light red background, along with their already red names. This helps distinguish Server Administrators from Room Administrators, who simply have a red name and no background.

Change Log: Auto-Reconnect system added. Update detection added. Idle-Out system added. Message buffer added. /unban command added. /su command added. Developer role added. Server Admin styling changed. Mention color changed to yellow. MOTD styling changed. PRO Membership now open in BETA. * Reposted from old deb blog. Original post date: 05/02/15

[io-chat]

1.1.1 Update Release

Along with patching several minor bugs, 1.1 brings Public Registration to it’s users. In a guest’s navigational menu, they will be offered the ability to register for a member’s account here. Having an account allows you to password protect your username, join multiple rooms, and will incorporate a friend’s list and profile in future updates. There is no age limit to registration, so please be honest about your age, as lying about your age is against the rules and can result in account revocation.

By typing /rules in a chatroom you will be able to see a list of that room’s specific rules. If you fail to follow these rules, you may be removed from the room by it’s moderators. This will not ban you from other rooms on IO-Chat.com, but if you attempt to create another account to re-enter that room, it will not work, and your account may be revoked.

Though I am aware that a lot of you do use mobile, this update focuses on functionality before useability. Be advised that mobile is still considered unsupported, and I recommend using Google Chrome on the desktop, as you will get the best experience from that platform.

Registration now Open Command system renovated. /help command added. /rules command added. /theme command removed. “MOTD:” text removed from motd. “Register” item added to guest menus. Home interface styling altered. “News” panel added to home. “Rooms” panel added to home. Mention sound fixed. User database converted to numeral-based accounts. * Reposted from old dev blog. Original Date: 03/05/15

[io-chat]

1.1.0. Release

1.1.0 (1.0) was released on New Years Day, 2015, bringing stability and functionality to IO-chat. There are several plans still in store for IO-Chat and it will be updated gradually. This post concerning the release was posted a little late because I was at the time unsure rather or not I wanted to use Tumblr to host the IO-Chat blog. I’ve decided it would be my best option, and as such will start doing it from here on.

Expect a short blog explaining the update and future plans with each update in the future. This update marks the official release of IO-Chat.com. I will wait a couple of months before adding features to make sure that the server is stable. Expect an update in late February or early March of 2015. * Reposted from old dev blog. Original Date: 01/01/15