mIRC or IRC

Do you think its worth it to make an irc for your site/forum? I think not, you can just make an AIM chatroom..and its nice and quick.

I wouldn't bother with IRC unless it is an old-school techie type of site. Java chats are easy to install, don't require knowledge of IRC, and are linkable directly on your site.

I think IRC is the way to go, no matter what kind of forum you run. I have an IRC chat room set up that is available to reach via java applet on the forum. However, users aren't confined to using the forum to log into chat, they can use whatever IRC program they want to customize their chat experience. It works excellently, especially if you ever have to take down the board for maintenance. Since the IRC channel isn't directly linked with the forum, people can chat while the site is being worked on.

It's up to u, i'd like to use Freenode IRC service, no registeration, text chat with fast connection. u only need install the CGI:IRC(web based IRC client) on ur site. hope this helps.

Do you think its worth it to make an irc for your site/forum? I think not, you can just make an AIM chatroom..and its nice and quick.

Flashchat (http://www.tufat.com/s_flash_chat_chatroom.htm) works good enough for reasonable numbers of users.

I've never seen it used under high loads.

-Raymond

I think IRC is the way to go, no matter what kind of forum you run. I have an IRC chat room set up that is available to reach via java applet on the forum. However, users aren't confined to using the forum to log into chat, they can use whatever IRC program they want to customize their chat experience. It works excellently, especially if you ever have to take down the board for maintenance. Since the IRC channel isn't directly linked with the forum, people can chat while the site is being worked on.We use it for the same reasons listed here :)

I despise iRC.

IRC is the way to go. No resources of your own used up and it's free.

It's not easy to learn IRC, but when one does learn it, you can manage it like you have the vB ACP to control your board.

You can have IRC moderators that don't need any mod privileges on your forum. As was mentioned, if your site is down, IRC is always up.

I used to use it a lot. But with techie groups. We got great use of it. But these days, we don't even try to support chat.