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154

answers:

1

Hello again fellow StackOverflow users!

What I am looking for currently is your opinions on the what the best live chat script would be for my website. I'd be using this on both my local computer repair (which I've not really set up yet) company's site, as well as my other technical support site that is geared more towards showing people how to fix whatever problem they have themselves. It'll be a little bit before I launch it on either site, as I need to find a good design for my local computer repair company's site, as well as redesign TweaksForGeeks.com's layout so that it's more magazine like. (If you have any suggestions on good Wordpress templates for these, that'd also be swell. :) )

Features I'd like for the live chat script to have: (if possible)

  • Real-time posting of messages (or as close to real time as possible)
  • Integration into my Windows Live Messenger account - By this I mean it'd be handy if instead of me having to man a separate open browser window and constantly check it for new messages, it'd be much more convenient if it would instead just allow me to receive and respond to messages via my Windows Live account the same way I'd chat with any other person on my contact list.
  • Sound notification of new messages when the chat isn't the focused window - In the event that using Windows Messenger isn't possible then I'd need it to notify me upon receipt of a new message.
  • Recording of chat transcripts - This is a MUST HAVE
  • Easy customization - I'll likely want to modify how it looks and whatnot, in addition to the fact that I'm going to set it up so that the chat transcripts can be posted to my site easily in order to be useful to my other visitors later on.

With all that in mind, what is available out there? I've not really researched this at all yet; aside from doing a cursory search just before I decided to ask my StackOverflow brothers.

As always, thank you!

-Sootah

A: 

Probably the closest option you'll have is something web-based like Meebo (maybe their chat widget?), which allows you to embed a "chat" into your page. I've used it previously for other projects and it's worked well. It's got offline message capabilities, too.

S Pangborn
Meebo looks really promising. I'll check it out.Thank you!
Sootah