Quick Chat

License

Quick Chat is released under GPLv2 license.

Quick Chat Demo

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Powered by Quick Chat

Description

WordPress has given a lot to the Linux community and to me personally so I've decided to give something back by making WordPress plugin for all of us to use. We all like to chat so I've decided to extend WordPress with quick and lightweight Ajax chat plugin. I've also decided to name this WordPress plugin "Quick Chat".

Features

Here are some of the features of Quick Chat WordPress chat plugin:

  • New in v4.10: Implement automatic private messages and chat rooms daily cleanup using WordPress cron API
  • Add PHP caching WordPress plugins like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache compatibility (See FAQ for more)
  • Add feature to configure which WordPress user role has Quick Chat moderator capability
  • Avoid losing CSS customizations after Quick Chat update (See FAQ for more)
  • Supports Quick Flag WordPress plugin to display country flag icons next to chat nicknames
  • You can set timeout for disabling updates to inactive user
  • Supports multiple private 1 on 1 chat sessions
  • Can filter bad words from your chat rooms
  • Admin users can easily download chat room transcripts
  • Besides gravatar.com avatars, local avatar plugins are also supported
  • Includes admin dashboard widget to chat with other admin users from your site backend
  • Has message input box character counter to limit message size
  • Allows admin users to instantly ban chat participant IP from chat
  • Has chat participants list for both sidebar and embedded chat
  • Site registered users can have their chat nicknames reserved
  • Site admins can reserve additional list of chat nicknames
  • Supports incoming messages sound notification for modern browsers
  • Supports unlimited number of separate chat rooms
  • User interface is translation friendly (translation template, Croatian, Italian, Czech, Romanian, Spanish, Dutch, Chinese, Russian, Brazilian Portuguese, Danish, German, Slovenian, Ukrainian, Estonian, French, Finnish and Welsh (some partial) translation files provided)
  • Integrates with WordPress user accounts to use login name as chat nickname
  • Comes with quality set of emoticons to spice up your chat experience
  • Saves your website bandwidth by sending AJAX requests only when there are new messages

Requirements

  • PHP 5
  • Requires at least: WordPress 3.3
  • Tested up to: WordPress 3.6
  • Current version: Quick Chat 4.13

Installation

You can find up to date installation instructions on Quick Chat WordPress.org installation page.

FAQ

You can find up to date FAQ on Quick Chat WordPress.org FAQ page.

Changelog

You can find up to date change log on Quick Chat WordPress.org changelog page.

Your donations

Quick Chat is open source web application created by single person and released under GPLv2 license. This means that you can use or even modify Quick Chat free of charge. Open source development and user support for my WordPress plugins takes at least few hours of my every day so if you find Quick Chat useful you can donate to help it's development. Thanks in advance.

Your feedback

Your feedback would be very appreciated. If you discover any bugs please describe your problem here or using Contact form and I will do my best to resolve it. Feature requests and comments are also welcome and I will try to fulfill any feature requests.

Quick Chat stable version

Quick Chat is hosted by official WordPress plugin directory so that is where you can get it:

DOWNLOAD Quick Chat 4.13 from WordPress.org

Quick Chat next version

If you have time and want to help making Quick Chat better you can test Quick Chat testing versions on your server and post feedback. Quick Chat version posted here will be uploaded to WordPress.org once it is reasonably stable.

Not yet available.

Changelog:

  • Not yet available.

Download:

  • Not yet available.

Quick Chat old versions

If latest Quick Chat version isn't working for you, here you can find download links to some of the older Quick Chat versions. I recommend that you use latest version if possible:

DevGenii

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1,481 thoughts on “Quick Chat”

  3. Webmaster

    I’ve just installed this plugin on my WP 3.3.1. installation with no hitches.  I’ve made a page and included this short-code in it: [quick-chat height="100" userlist_position="left" loggedin_visible="1" guests_visible="0" avatars="0" send_button="1"].   However, when I view the page, I can see the input box, but nothing else seems to work.  I can’t send messages to anyone (no users list shows up anyway) .  Plus, quich-chat seems to be ignoring my tags.  I can see and type into it even when not logged-in, plus I have all the commands (sound, ban, delete and so on)  available to me even as a guest. Anyone have any ideas, please?  I have turned on debugging, but that is not showing anything.

    Reply ↓
  4. Marko

    I’m sorry to all who posted questions, again I’m not feeling so good so I can’t reply to individual questions today but I can offer some advice. Two things make Quick Chat die, caching plugins and jQuery older that 1.4.4 version. Actually in the last month or so I haven’t came across any other issues except those two. So please double check. If you have excluded those check your browser web console and server php error logs and if you believe you found a bug then please post here or use contact form but please prepare some details because I’m in no condition to debug my eyes out (one remaining eye to be correct) . Thank you and good luck!

    Reply ↓
  5. Te

    Is there a way to find out poster’s IP address after he has already left the chat? The ban button only works if the user is still in the chat.

    Reply ↓
    1. Marko

      Yes there is but you must use phpmyadmin to take a look at wp_quick_chat_messages table inside your wordpress database. There you will find all messages with additional info like message sender IP address. Please be careful so you don’t erase something important. 🙂

      Reply ↓
    1. Sanity

      Btw my interval setting for usercheck is 5 seconds and new message is 1 second. Still it shows too late like 20 to 60 seconds.

      Reply ↓
  8. Te

    May sound like a stupid question but where can I change the language to Finnish? I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find the setting for it. :I

    Reply ↓
    1. Marko

      Hi, in WordPress you can’t switch language for only one component. You do it globally by modifying wp-config.php line define(‘WPLANG’, ”); into define(‘WPLANG’, ‘fi_FI’); Then all WP plugins and WP it self uses Finnish translation where ever it is available. Where it isn’t available English is shown. Thanks to community QC has complete Finnish translation for 3.40 version (thanks guys) 😉

      Reply ↓
    1. Marko

      Hi Kieran,
      I like my code solid and the only way to learn what you could make better is to listen to people using your code on their own server in their own environment. This way I learn new stuff and help people in the process. Also some people decide to donate to my effort so my family has something to eat 🙂

      What you describe is not an issue, but a feature. In Quick Chat I’ve implemented WordPress nonces system http://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Nonces so that ajax requests don’t work if they originate from domain other than the one defined in your Admin Dashboard -> Settings -> General Settings -> WordPress Address (URL). To WordPress nonces system http://www.mywebsitehere.com isn’t the same thing as http://mywebsitehere.com, (it has www prefix) so ajax requests are blocked. All of this is so that someone else couldn’t modify Quick Chat on his own site to send ajax requests to your site and gain admin access over your chat rooms. So you should decide do you wan’t to use your site with or without www, that’s one of the reasons why WP guys have placed Admin Dashboard -> Settings -> General Settings -> WordPress Address (URL) setting in the first place.

      Regards,
      Marko

      Reply ↓
  11. Robert

    Love quick chat but its not saving anything into the transcripts folder. It’s just empty. any suggestions?

    Reply ↓
  12. Dg

    Hi Marko,

    How to assign to user admin permissions?…For example delete messages or ban users? Have you some harcode to do?

    Thank you very much for this fantastic plugin

    Dante

     

    Reply ↓
  13. Taras

    How to change the location of new messages?
    Now there are new messages at the bottom, but I need the top. Is that possible?

    Reply ↓
  14. Michelle

    I love this plugin. My first question is, how do i change the time stamp to reflect local time. Right now the time stamp is 5hrs behind and i am on eastern time. Thanks

    Reply ↓
  15. Nizam Ahamad

    thanks for the great plugin. is there’s a way to change *.jpg *png  or any images automatically turn to embed image? 

    Reply ↓
  18. Bob

    Have been having a lot of problems lately where where users have been unable to transmit their messages to each other even though we refresh it constantly. Is there some one that can take a look at this for us? I’m afraid I don’t know to much about this stuff but I am trying to learn how to Moderate this chat and it is just not working for me? Thank You.

    Reply ↓
    1. Marko Author

      Hi Bob. If you are talking about stillsdisease.org current official Quick Chat version (3.40) isn’t compatible with caching plugins and on that site you have WP Super Cache plugin. Yesterday I’ve uploaded Quick Chat version to TechyTalk.info that is caching plugins compatible but it needs more testing before releasing (you can contact me if you’re willing to test and report back). Quick Chat is also currently running WP Super Cache and my tests are successful, I’m also working on caching plugin of my own and it also works with this code.

      Regards,
      Marko

      Reply ↓
  19. Ilo

    Hello Marko, I’ve just noticed a bug, from time to time the “Message container height” option becomes empty and the chat won’t show up cuz of that 😀 it’s kinda funny, people can write to chat but won’t see messages. I don’t have any idea why it becomes empty, each time i have to manually change the value to 450 px from the dashboard>widgets

    Reply ↓
  21. Mario

    I am using wordpress and its plugins for a logn time, and everytime i asked the developer for a help they always reply. i asked you 3 times here and you ignored me and i send you also a nice email that you also ingnored. Marko, i am sorry to say that you are not profesional and it is a shame cause u had a good application. In order to get money, you must learn first to be profesional. Sorry but this is my opinion. My client reject your plug in and the donation because i couldnt solve the problem. Only in internet explorer works, in other browsers it doesnt….

    Reply ↓
    1. Marko Author

      Mario, I’m sorry that this is your experience. Can I say a few words about all of this? Few things prevents me from replying to all contact form mail (around 50 email per day). Recently I lost sight to one of my eyes due to my multiple sclerosis condition. I would like to do my best to prevent the same thing happening to my remaining eye, yet here I am coding free and open source WordPress plugins and replying to as much email as I’m currently able to reply. When placed in my position most “professionals” would pull the plug on any free and opensource work but not me.

      About Quick Chat plugin, if it doesn’t work on your site the way you expect it to work you can’t say Quick Chat is broken. Quick Chat is broken when it doesn’t work on FRESH WordPress install with recent versions of Firefox and Chromium browsers. I don’t even test regularly on Internet Explorer because I use Linux and fortunately I don’t have easy access to Microsoft’s broken browsers. Anything beyond that is out of my reach and it is up to you to make it work, except if you hire me to make it work on your site. Actually it is my good will to give any kind of support because Quick Chat is released under GPLv2 license, you should read it carefully.

      Before I got ill I’ve worked days and nights to help people using my code not asking anything in return simply because I like coding and I still do the same when ever I can but right now I’m fighting very serious health issues, medical bills, Quick Chat bugs and your angry comment. Also you haven’t placed any references to your free and open source code so I could inspect your work?

      Regards,
      Marko

      Reply ↓
  23. JVonD

    I love your chat. Thanks a bunch! It would be a great feature to be able to select a custom/different sound.

    Just realized that the new update killed the gravitars. OUCH! Not good…

    Reply ↓
      1. Marko Author

        Some time ago I’ve changed the way avatars are handled to support local avatar plugins and that change made old messages loose avatar. You probably upgraded from that version to latest 😉

        Reply ↓
  25. RickyDollar

    I got this error message when using Developer Tools in my IE. jQuery.quick_chat_preg_quote=function(a){return a.replace(RegExp(“[.*+?|()\[\]{}\\]”,”g”),”\$&”)};jQuery.quick_chat_stripslashes=function(a){a=a.replace(/\’/g,”‘”);a=a.replace(/\”/g,'”‘);a=a.replace(/\\/g,”\”);return a=a.replace(/\/g,”\x00″)};jQuery.quick_chat_flag_html=function(a){re

    The error message says “Object doesnt support this property or method

    Reply ↓
    1. Marko Author

      I’ve replied to your email, just writing here to notify everyone that I’ve found and fixed avatar bug that bugged us all for the last month or so. The bug was with Dashboard -> Settings -> Discussion -> Don’t show Avatars enabled Quick Chat would stop working. I’ve release Quick Chat 3.41, please update and clear your browser history before testing, it should work now. 😉

      Reply ↓
      2. Fee

        Same problem here: Only admins can see each other, chat with each other, write messages. As far as I can see, the javascript doesn’t replace the history container and user container for non admins.

        Reply ↓
        1. Fee

          It’s only working for admin users, if your installation settings are aware of some security.
          For two essential functions, quick_chat_check_username and quick_chat_update_messages, the ajax script (quick_chat_ajaxurl) is loading from wp-admin/admin-ajax.php.
          So, if you use plugins that keep non-admin users out of backend, they cannot chat, too.

          Reply ↓
          1. Marko Author

            Hello,
            I’ll drop a few words about this. Proper way to do ajax in WordPress is trough admin-ajax.php. “admin” being part of this file name doesn’t mean it is meant to be used only by admin users or only from site backend. What I’m trying to say is that your problem is elsewhere, probably in Javascript. You should open your browser console or use Firebug to monitor errors or warnings as your page is loading. Also you need to ensure that you are accessing your site with or without www prefix (depends on what you have specified in Dashboard -> General settings) because if you do it wrong WP security kicks in. Also for QC 3.41 caching plugins are not allowed (on TechyTalk.info you can see upcoming caching compatible version in action). Good luck!

            Reply ↓
            1. Fee

              Hi Marko, thanks for your reply!
              In my case it’s really the backend restriction, I’ve put a line in my theme’s function.php for restricting access. If I comment this out, the chat is working for non-admins. But thanks for your input, it helped me much to find the cause. Now I can go on and write a condition to the access restriction. … I’lll try…

              Reply ↓
    2. Marko Author

      Ivan, if you’re talking about snookerpro.ru/ you have old jQuery 1.4.3 version and that’s why QC isn’t working as expected (needs jQuery 1.4.4 minimum).

      Reply ↓
    1. Marko Author

      On your site there is something definitely wrong that prevents you from using Quick Chat. You can debug your self using Firebug or similar tool or hire my to debug instead of you.

      Reply ↓
        1. Marko Author

          No. My plugins are free and open source but if I debug it would cost you something. You can use contact form if you’re interested.

          Regards

          Reply ↓
  28. Marko Author

    Sorry I don’t understand what you mean by reload with new message? If you think about message refresh interval you can tweak that in Quick Chat settings in “General options” section.

    Reply ↓
  29. Sean

    hi,
    I recently installed quick chat on my WordPress site running on aws.. After an event where there were more than 10 to 15 online users I noticed the instance CPU peaked and my web site was not allowing new connections. I will have to disable quick chat until I find a fix.. Any ideas?
    I really like the quick chat plug in, but I cannot use it in production until a fix is found to this issue.

    thanks for any info!
    Sean

    Reply ↓
    1. Marko Author

      Hello,this is actiually not an issue. Due to its real time nature we’re talking about one of the most cpu intensive things you can place on your site. You must have decent server to run it and since nothing is unlimited even most powerful server has it’s concurrent users limit. You can try upping users and message refresh intervals in QC admin settings. Also I don’t recomend running QC on sidebar if you have a lot of concurrent visitors because not all of them want to chat but this way they all use CPU. I spent most of my time coding QC in making optimizations and it simply requires processing recources to poll for new messages for all users and there’s no other way around for web chat.

      Regards,
      Marko

      Reply ↓
  30. Rudolf Feld

    Hello,

    for another plugin i need the time-setting set to “Berlin”. The chat adds to the UTC-time 4 hours. It must be added 2 hours. Can you fix that problem? I´m sorry for my bad english. I hope you understand me.

    greez

    Oski

    Reply ↓
    1. Marko Author

      Hi,
      this kind of thing usually works fine but if your php and mysql server have different time zone settings or if they are miss configured this can happen. That’s why I’ve place “Manual timestamp offset when displaying messages (+/- hours)” input box in Quick Chat admin settings Appearance section where you can manually add or remove hours. This way you can place -2 in this box, save settings and It’ll show correct timestamps for all messages.

      Reply ↓
      1. Rudolf+Feld

        Oh Thanks. I didt’t see that settings before. Yes the Server works withs UTC-Time. But i don’t understand why he add 4 hours. It works correctly yet.

        greez

        Oski

        Reply ↓
  31. Kier

    i have a suggestion, why don’t put an auto clean system on the next update? where messages is limited to a user specific number and older messages will be automatically deleted..

    Reply ↓
    1. Marko Author

      Your suggestion makes sense, a few versions ago that was implemented. But it showed that it brings unnecessary processing overload to every message check interval for every user to check is number of messages equal to what you have in Quick Chat settings. Checking for messages is by the way the most intensive job Quick Chat does so this must be very optimized. I will see what can be done with WP cron but doing it manually is the least CPU intensive.

      Reply ↓
  33. Silver

    Is it also possible to place the part of the chat where all the messages appear beneath the part where you can add a message to the chat?

    Reply ↓
  41. Man With Van

    nice plugin.. already using it…

    i am having a problem…. when i logout.. and login, i can see what other had been chatting while i was offline… is there is a way where when new logout and login, we get a clean slate i.e. no history

    Reply ↓
  42. grigori80

    Plugin is great but why I can’t ban checked users? If I check somebody and click Ban then show me: You must check at least one user. What’s wrong. Please help Me.

    Reply ↓
  43. fRANK

    Hi There
    first of all great CHAT plugin !!

    How can I reverse the chat entrys ??
    right now the new entrys will appear on the button but i like to have new entry’s on the TOP.!!
    Second on my adm in view I do not have the “Manual timestamp offset when displaying messages ” Did you get rite of this feature ??
    regards

    Reply ↓
    1. Marko Author

      To reverse entries code must be modified, there is no option for this yet. For timestamp offset, it should be there but I’ve moved it to Appearance section if I recall corectly.

      Reply ↓
  44. lango

    Hi,
    at first: thanks for your work!

    Quick Chat uses the usernames from the WP-installation. Can i change it, that Quick Chat uses the nicknames from the users at default?

    lango

    Reply ↓
  45. FTBear

    Hi,
    Very nice, easy-to-go plugin. Good work.
    I’m searching for a chat plugin i can mod to include typing-status (“NN is typing…”) and logging among other things.
    The purpose is for certain people to talk to a professional and analyze the communication afterwards.
    Given that I am new to WordPress but know a great deal about PHP and Javascript can we use quick-chat as the foundation you think?

    BR;
    Bjorn

    Reply ↓
    1. Marko Author

      NN is typing on web chat would spam your server with unnecessary ajax calls. It is different on desktop chat apps where after logging in you use peer to peer to communicate with other side but using web server in the middle.. This can be implemented but it is kinda throwing you server processing power in the wind. Keep in mind that Quick Chat as it is right now stretches server client model to it’s limits.

      Regards

      Reply ↓
      1. FTBear

        Thanks for quick reply.
        Just to clarify that NN in this case would be a logged in user thus reducing the amount of users. Also it would just be subject for one-to-one chats such as private rooms. The service itself will not have a large amount of users, at least we don’t want it to be … sounds like a the wrong direction for a successful website 🙂 but that’s actually the truth.

        Reply ↓
        1. Marko Author

          Here’s what will happen. You will need to insert into database every time someone starts or stops typing. And every time this happens every user on the chat will need to break it’s long polling circle to fetch info that this user has stopped or started typing and reconnect it’s long polling loop. Now if you have small number of users like 10 typing messages and chatting on your site with regular Quick Chat long polling processing you can have 200+ queries per second hit on your database. But if this is something important to your users I’m sure you’ll have server with processing power to do it. If you ever do it please send me a link I would like to see how it works, thanks 😉

          Reply ↓
          1. FTBear

            I’ll brief you on the progress if we do anything, thanks.
            As I see it we will probably handle it as if its just another message although sent and handled automatically and separate. And of course with some suitable logic for the clients (such as keyboard time thresholds and such)

            Reply ↓
            1. Marko Author

              Great to see you are working on this. You can send message the way I’m sending it for private chat notifications. There is magic user name quick_chat for system messages. Payload of these messages is json encoded data for private chat system operation. You have javascript function quick_chat_new_message(), if you place last parameter to true then this is considered system message, it will have quick_chat user name applied on php side and it won’t be displayed to users. In update messages loop on JS side you have part where it checks is this message regular (to be displayed) or system message (to be processed differently). Basically the foundation for what you need is alread there you just need to process your messages inside this loop by json decoding them and checking is this private chat system message or your notification message. Good luck!

              Reply ↓
  46. Célia

    Hi, Thanks for this wonderful pluggin !
    But is there a way to desactivate the “entry button” to post ?
    When I’m writing on the chat, if I press enter, my message is send, i want to desactivate this and just use the button “send” to post.
    Thanks for your help !

    Reply ↓
    1. Marko Author

      Hello,
      there is a way but it involves slight modification of Quick Chat Javascript code. You can contact me if you would like me to do this mod or you can do it your self/someone you know can do it for you.

      Regards,
      Marko

      Reply ↓
  47. mike

    Hi Marko,

    I haven’t been here in a long time. Just upgraded from v1.84 to 3.2 and WOW!! …. You’ve been a busy guy. 😉

    Thanks again for the great plugin. My kids have a great time using their own private chat rooms.

    Best regards,
    Mike.

    Reply ↓
  48. Loran

    Hi,
    i have one problem..i installed it, widget too, i can write message, but when i send it, nothing appear up (black windows for message)

    Reply ↓
  50. Geraldo

    Hello Marko, I have tested you QuickChat before and it worked fine, now I have downloaded the latest version and the [quick-chat] typed in on a page does not work, please help…

    Reply ↓

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