PHP Live Chat With Web and Windows Clients

Take a look at the features below, try the live-demo system, or go ahead and view the PHP live chat on CodeCanyon.

Live Support Chat – System Requirements

In order to be able to use ClientEngage Visitor Chat, you must fulfil the following system requirements:

• Apache 2 HTTP Server
• Preferably with mod_rewrite enabled
• PHP with a version of greater than PHP 5.2.8
• MySQL with a version of greater than MySQL 5 (i.e. with InnoDB support)
• Preferably a subdomain/domain for use with ClientEngage Visitor Chat
• Safe mode: off
• Enough server-resources for the number of concurrent chatters you expect
• jQuery: if your site does not use jQuery, VisitorChat will automatically include it. If your site does use jQuery, it is recommended that you use a version greater than 1.9.1
• Finally, the PHP PDO extensions have to be installed

System requirements of the Windows-based client

• .NET4 Framework (will be installed if not already available)
• Windows XP (SP3), Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8

How does the live support chat script “work”?

The chat employs AJAX technologies and regularly checks with the server for any new messages. When you are actively chatting, the interval is 2.5 seconds. However, once activity goes down, this interval slowly decreases to only every 10 seconds. If you are not signed-up in a chat, it will contact the sever only every 25 seconds to check if any administrators are online. So you see: VisitorChat does its best to determine the right combination of user experience & server load.

A note on server performance

This chat system employs AJAX technologies and does not rely on WebSockets for its communication. This means that anyone can run Visitor Chat, as long as your server fulfils the requirements outlined below. However, this also means that this system is not intended for ultra-heavy-duty use: so don’t build the next Facebook and try to have 10m people use this at once. That being said, on average server-specifications, there is nothing stopping you from having 15-20 concurrent conversations.

A note on chat-styles

The chat looks beautiful across all modern platforms and browsers.
However, the chat-box may look “out of place” if you have CSS styles on your website that affect whole tags (such as “div {margin:50px;}” or “span {padding:50px;}”).
In such cases, you may have to edit the Chat-Style for that particular website to override your styles.

Changelog

22/06/2013: 
    - Public release of ClientEngage Visitor Chat v1.1.9
        - Now uses visitors' email & name as FROM in enquiry notification emails
        - Now includes senders' names in enquiry notification email subjects
        - Now correctly caches HTTPS & HTTP JavaScript codes separately
        - Framework upgrade
        - No need to re-install the Windows-client as it is unchanged
10/06/2013: 
    - Public release of ClientEngage Visitor Chat v1.1.5
        - NEW: password-reset function for administrators
        - Fixed the hyperlink-target to the respective enquiry in the email-notification
        - Fixed an error that occurred when setting longer timezones such as America/Kentucky/Monticello
        - Fixed placeholder-attributes in IE7 and IE8
        - Updated the CakePHP framework
        - No need to re-install the Windows-client as it is unchanged
04/05/2013: 
    - Public release of ClientEngage Visitor Chat v1.1.2
        - Visitor/operator typing indicator
        - Added typing indicator in Windows client
        - Root page now redirects to login
        - Fixed text/hyperlink colour in Windows client
        - Fixed display issue when highlighting messages in Windows client
        - Some minor CSS improvements to override host-site styles
        - Front-end: added a CSS class to admin-messages (".vc_admin_message")
        - Implemented an auto-login function in the Windows client
        - Updated the CakePHP framework
22/04/2013: 
    - Public release of ClientEngage Visitor Chat v1.0.1