[thelist] live chat

[Damien COLA]

Following this thread, I've looked into four URLs provided :
phplivesupport, live2support and boldchat are not opensource or free
(boldchat is free with limited options, but source code isn't provided,
it's a hosted service)

I've installed helpcenterlive which is open source and free, and the guy
doing it is developping a WinAPP too.
I haven't tried the WinAPP, just the web access, and it rocks !
I suppose phplive is better (pure supposition) but really helpcenterlive
is not a toy, it's niiiice.
It is english only, but there's a forum where you can find common
languages files.
At the moment you cannot provide your users with multi languages, but
some have done a language file with both languages, say "french-english"
in the same sentences.

I use the latest version 1.6 available from sourceforge.

The creator says he is working on the version 2.0 (37% accomplished) and
it will be all object oriented.
I haven't looked into the code, but I suppose it must be a lot of work.

Hope this helps make up your mind.

-----Original Message-----
> Alex Beston wrote:
> http://www.phplivesupport.com/ http://www.boldchat.com/ 
> http://www.live2support.com/ http://www.helpcenterlive.com/ has any 
> one any experience of using these things - are there any good free 
> ones?

I agree with previous post. PHPLive is very good.
I would not go with an ASP or monthly fee-based solution.
Host it yourself, setup of PHPLive is not very complex if you understand
the basics of MySql DB names and editing one PHP config file.

The cool thing of PHPLive (I must admit ignorance on other products) is
that it offers an EXE version for the company to keep as a taskbar icon
running on any PC. Anytime someone hits your site, it notifies you with
bell, popup, etc. and any one of the "agents" with the client can answer
without having to have a browser open all the time.  
I found that feature to make it stand out from all the free scripts out
there. There's more to PHPLive, but that's the killer part