UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums UBB.threads Version 7/8 Support 90% Server load with Shout Box

agreed, hence my post

I've always been a firm believer in "right tool for the job."

I'll also admit my bias right up front and tell you that I never liked the shoutbox because it can't very well be limited in use to what it's designed to be.

I hate the shoutbox; I'll be the first one to say that lol... I don't use it on any of my sites for one reason, it's just another place that users can abuse and would have to be heavily monitored... BUT my clients love it on their forums, and I can see how it can be good for some situations at the same time...

I also have a chatroom - but when I implemented it, my users said ' why should we use it - we already have a chatroom here?'

I have made the shoutbox in the left hand column with a direct link to disable the right hand column - these keeps everyone happy.

However I would prefer for people to use the chatroom - but they like the ability to chat and browse the forums at the same time.

Ever wondered why eve's chat is in a popup box? Now you know. So people can browse and chat at the same time.

I have heard, numerous times, "is there anyway we can add the chat to a popup window?" (referring to the shoutbox).

And actually, my irc chat page on my site has a "detach chat" link that does a popup with the chat script there lol

would it be possible to detach the shoutbox into a separate window/popup? even better, as an "always on top" window.

i've experimented with this, without success. the instructions for accessing the shoutbox externally indicate that certain styles have to be set, without being specific.

Any more thought about how to handle the Shout Box?

I'm running 7.2 and am fairly confident the shout box was causing a "stickiness" issue on my board. Pages would sometimes be slow to load, and it would stick for about 30 seconds and then go back to normal.

Today, I turned the shout box off and the stickiness issue went away.

I think it's a cool feature and would love to keep it integrated in my board.

In the meantime, I'll look at some of the alternatives Gizmo posted.

In an upcoming version we'll be switching all of our ajax over to YUI. This has the benefit of being tested on a variety of platforms and will pretty much standardize everything in this area. This should help alleviate these types of issues.

YUI,DEWY,LUI - How long before we see this type of implementation?

YUI will be in an upcoming build

As in 7.3, 7.4, 7.xxx? Just mean I know Rick is looking into it but curious what ballpark time range might it possibly be.

Unfortnately, I can only really comment on things publicly discussed here; YUI in general has been, specific versioning information hasn't.

I predict the 7.xxx version (well, except for the 7.0.x-7.2.1 builds), if we're guessing

ROFL - Good guess

Lol yes, if we're guessing, I speculate a version after 7.2! lol

My users are bummed I pulled the shout box.

One thing to remember is even with converting things to YUI, the shoutbox will always be a drain on the server if it's heavily used. It's pretty much why many hosts don't allow web based chat scripts, it's just a lot of traffic on the server. The YUI conversion should help with the hanging problems for some people, but as far as overall load on the server, I'm not sure how much that will change.

Agreed, a java solution is best for those webhosts; as java is run from the users machine and doesn't nessessarily rely on the web server to run anything

one easy change (not a fix) is to just edit ubbthreads.inc.php and add a check for is_logged_in, in order to load the shoutbox.

that rids you of the anonymous chat box load.

just add:
after the calendar check..