| Specialized
Chat Setups
Firewall
Issues
Auditorium Events
Moderated Chat in One Room
Online Classrooms and Web Tours
Resources
Firewall
Issues
Some
firewalls restrict access to only port 80, which is the port
number web servers operate on. You can allow chat access through
port 80 if you do the following:
- Your
Web Crossing server must be running in DWS
mode on port 80
- The
Chat Client port must be set to port 80
- There
can be no other applications using port 80 on the same server,
even under a different IP address
- The
chat server IP and the direct web service IP must be the same
It's
possible to use SOCKS protocol to allow users inside and outside
a firewall to communicate in chat. See the Sysop
Documentation for more details.
Auditorium
Events
You
can set up Auditorium-type events using Web Crossing chat. Be
aware that a large number of chatters may also require you to
set up one or more fanout servers
for extra chat capacity.
The
setup described below will provide three rooms:
An Audience
room, where your visitors can chat amongst themselves or send
questions to the stage via an Ask Question button. The
stream of conversation from the Stage is also presented in this
room in a read-only fashion.
A Backstage
room, where questions from the audience are received by a
moderator. Clicking on the question in the chat window will automatically
transfer it to the message input box for modification. Pressing
Return will send it to the Stage.
The
Stage, where the interviewer/host and the guest are alone,
and can talk freely. Their chat stream is available in the Audience
room.
Personnel
needed:
You
definitely need a coordinator to track the event and keep in touch
with everyone to keep the event organized.
You
probably want to have one chat host in each Audience room if you
can.
Your
Audience members will only need to be in one room at a time: the
Audience room. They will see the chat stream from the Stage as
well as chat from users in their own room.
Your
Moderator, the one who will screen and edit questions and send
them to the Stage, needs to be in the Backstage room, and may
wish to be in the Stage as well to monitor conversation there.
The Moderator will automatically receive questions from the Audience
rooms and be able to send them on, editing if desired, to the
Stage.
The
Guest and Interviewer need to be in the Stage room, and may also
wish to be in the Backstage room. Their chat stream in the Stage
is visible to all the Audience rooms.
Setting
up the rooms:
Setting
up this specialized chat application requires some knowledge of
webx.tpl files and macros. We suggest you review
those sections first if you've not done so already.
First,
find and download the questionchat.tpl file from the Lundeen
ftp server.
(ftp://ftp.webcrossing.com/pub/WebCrossing/Extras/Templates/questionchat.tpl)
This macro will only work with Web Crossing chat 1.3.5 or greater.
This
is how to set everything up:
-
Create 3 rooms in your Web Crossing database as follows
- Audience
- Check Allow Anonymous and assign the Chat Room Template:
Audience
- BackStage
- Don't check Allow Anonymous, and assign the Chat Room
Template: Backstage
- Stage
- Don't check Allow Anonymous, and assign the Chat Room
Template: Stage
- Edit
the macro in the .tpl file called setChatRoomVars to
correspond to the chat room unique
ID numbers that were created in step 1.
You can find these numbers by looking at the URLs to enter each
room. Be sure to include the leading period (.).
- Edit
the 3 macros, Audience, Backstage, and Stage as you wish, adding
HTML or additional chat
parameters to suit your particular situation.
- Copy
the file of macros (questionchat.tpl) into your existing webx.tpl
file.
- Edit
the access rights for the various rooms as appropriate:
- Stage:
limited access for regular audience and full access for
the Host, Guest, and Interviewer.
- Host,
guest, interviewer, and sysop: host access
- Registered
users: read-only access
- Guest
users: read-only access
- Audience
room: This room should be open to everyone as necessary.
- Host,
guest, interviewer, and sysop: host access
- Registered
users: participant
- Guest
users: participant
- Backstage
room: This room should be closed to everyone except
the moderator/host.
- Host,
guest, interviewer, moderator (one who screens and sends
questions) and sysop: host access
- Registered
users: no access
- Guest
users: no access
- Edit
the Audience room (but NOT the Backstage room) to make
the Stage room the main room. This is done by editing the Audience
room and adding the Stage room unique
ID in the "Main Room for this table" box.
- Go
to the Control Panel > Reset file cache
for HTML files and webx.tpl templates and click there
to reset the cache.
- Test
all of the rooms and have enough people in the Audience to force
an overflow room to make sure that you have all of the permissions
set correctly.
Moderated
Chat in One Room
If you're
expecting a small crowd, and want to allow the guest direct access
to the audience, you can moderate a chat using "crowd control"
techniques rather than software changes. This technique is known
as "protocol."
Give
the sysop and hosts Host access, and everyone else Participant
access.
Instruct
the users, as they come into the room, that when they wish to
ask a question, they can put a single ?
onscreen. When they want to make a comment, then can use a !.
Otherwise they should remain silent until they are called on.
This can be done via private messages if you wish, or in the HTML
around the chat room or on the preceding page.
One
host will act as the Keeper of the Queue - in other words, the
person who keeps track of who's in line to ask questions. Putting
the queue onscreen occasionally reminds the interviewer whose
question comes next, and allows users in line to know when their
turn is coming up.
The
Interviewer will call on each user in turn to ask their question,
and the guest can respond.
Online
Classrooms and Web Tours
You
can set up the HTML around your chat applet so that the bottom
frame is the applet and the top frame is a content frame.
In this
way, as the host, you can "push" content into the top
frame for classroom use or to provide a "web tour" of
sites you've selected.
| Note:
Users who are in the chat room via the HTML chat interface
will not be pushed the content in the top frame. They must
be using the Java applet to participate in a web tour or classroom
situation using the commands described below. |
This
is how to set up something like this:
- Create
a chat room and give yourself host privileges there.
- Set
up a frameset containing the chat applet in the bottom half
of the page and a beginning content frame in the top half of
the page.
- Code
the bottom frame to call your chat room URL
(something like http://www.webxharbor.com/webx?196@@.ee6b9d8)
| Note:
If you have a banner, footer, or extraneous material in
your chat room page, you probably will want to create a
bare-bones chat template (minus a banner, for instance)
and put it in your webx.tpl file. In the Edit
area of the chat room, assign your bare-bones template to
this room. See the Templates
pages for more detail. |
- Create
an HTML page, if necessary, for the top, content, frame of your
frameset.
- Upload
your frameset to the web.
- Go
to your frameset URL and the chat room should load in the bottom
frame.
- To
change the content in the top frame, use this formula, typed
into the message line:
-
Command: ))f framename URL
- Example:
))f bottom http://www.lundeen.com/
- NOTE:
This must be a FULL URL to a WWW resource (.html, .gif or
.jpeg, etc.).
- The
commands you enter are stored and latecomers are shown the list
of commands, as quickly as Web Crossing can serve them, to keep visitors
current. To clear the command list, use these commands:
- Command:
/d clearCommandList
- Example:
/d clearCommandList
Resources
Sysop
Documentation
Sysop
Control Panel
- Chat
Services
- Chat
Status
Web Crossing
FAQ
|
