Add a chatroom to your website

A chatroom on your website is the perfect place for you and your users to come together and chat in real time. Run it as a support desk for your products and inquiries or just a friendly social hangout - whatever the choice, it's easy to add a simple Java based chatroom to your 350pages.

There are several different types of chatroom available, but our recommendation is the one at http://www.freejavachat.com/setup.html - offering you a wide and flexible number of customization options as well as the best interface for your users.

On the setup page, you will need to specify several options about the configuration of your chatroom. Each option is detailed below step-by-step:

Width and Height of chat client: These two options specify the size of your chatroom in pixels. The larger you go, the more room you'll need to allow for your chatroom.
Channel Name: Here, you will need to specify the name of your chatroom. Try to come up with a unique name, or you may find yourself sharing your chatroom with another group. Remember to preface your chosen chatroom with #
Font Name and Size: These two options specify the default font and size on your page. If you want to change these from the default, remember that you need to type the exact name of your font.

The color section is entirely optional, but allows you to set the look of each part of your chatroom. You may wish to leave this as the default, or color it to be closer to your 350pages style.

Each of the advanced options is detailed below:
Require users to select a Nickname before joining chat?: If this option is set to yes, when users log onto your chatroom they will have to specify their nickname. If the option is set to no, they will randomly be assigned with a guest name.
Use the Simple UI with a restricted set of commands?: This affects how much control over the chatroom that you give to your users. Having the simple UI switched on may, for example, limit their control over changing their own font and size.
Show users joining the channel?: If this is switched to on, there will be a notification in the chat window of anyone joining the chat.
Show only chat?: Having this switched on will remove all notifications from the chat room (such as administration messages sent from the chat server).
Show color panel?: Having this on will show the color panel from which users can change their font colors.
Play Sounds?: If this option is switched on, sounds may play when users join and leave the chatroom.
Show server window?: If this option is switched on, messages from the central chat server (such as administration messages) will appear in a separate window.
Turn on timestamping?: If this option is switched on, the time of when a message was sent will be displayed on screen.
Float new private message/channel windows?: If this option is switched on, private messages from one user to another will pop up in a different window to the chatroom.

When you are happy with your settings, click on the Generate button. This will pop up a block of HTML code in a separate window. Highlight and copy this code.

Then, in the 350pages editor for your page, go to the Object above or below where you wish to place the chatroom and select the Insert option on the Object's editor bar.  From the menu select Paragraph, and click on above or below (or replace if you want to swap the currently selected item for your chatroom) and this will bring up the Text editor.

You will see three tabs at the top of the Text editor. Click on the HTML tab, and 'paste' the code for the chatroom into the box. Click Save, and the chatroom should appear as you want it. Save and publish the page as you normally would so that everyone on the web can see it too.