ChatPat version 2.0

Overview

Chat-Pat is unique chat script for inclusion into existing websites and systems. It can be included in an iframe and thus allows you to integrate it
into any system without need to programming experience.
It uses AJAX to refresh the chat screen which removes unpleasant blinking.

Requirements
Installation and usage
Advanced Users: Authorization modes
License

Requirements

The script needs only web host with PHP 4 or above and MySQL database.

Installation

The installation of ChatPat is very simple and requires only few steps.

1. Upload the files on your web host
2. Create a database for use of ChatPat. ChatPat can also share the same database with other applications you may have on the host
3. Chmod folder 'inc' to 0777
4. Visit install.php with your browser.
Then you have to enter the database access parametters and that's all!
To use the script, you can visit the administration at admin.php.
The administration panel will let you specify authorization mode (see below), the colors and the size of the chat box. Visiting samplepage.php will show you how the chat can look in any web page.
It's recommended to remove install.php from the host when you are done.
Changing the design
You can modify all files from folder 'templates' with any wysywig or ordinary web editor and change main.css in the root folder for the stylesheets.

Advanced Users: Authorization modes

Chat-Pat allows 4 different authorization modes for the chat users. By default the user needs only to select a nickname
and then is allowed to chat. However you can very easy change the authorization mode to meet your requirements by visiting the administration panel.

Mode A:

If the authorization is set to A your visitors will need to register and log in in the chat system. This is most usefull when you are
using Chat-Pat stand-alone and want to collect the user's info

Mode B:

This mode is very useful if you have an existing membership system - lets say forum, dating site or whatever. Mode B allows you
to integrate Chat-Pat into such system extremly easy without any programming. It is the most "advanced" mode as you need to know
what your membership system is using. If you set the mode to B, you will need also to enter 3 more values in the administration:

- name of the table with the users
- name of the field containing the login
- name of the field containing the pass

Users table should contain the name of the table which holds your member's data. Chat-Pat needs this info to know where to search
for the username and password of the user who tries to log in the chat.

Username field should contain the name of the field, which contains the username (login, nick or whatever does your existing membership
system use)

And password is obviously the field for password.

In B mode the users will see only login screen, not register.

Mode C:

If mode is set to C your members won't need to log in Chat-Pat if they are already logged into your membership system.
This mode does not need to know your table with users and field names. It needs you only to pass the user's info in session.
(You need some basic programming knowledge to do that). If the page where you include Chat-Pat

Of course you may need to pass the username and password dynamicly in your program.

Mode D:

This is the simplest mode, thats why it is set by default. To set it, you need only to change $regmode to D.
When the mode is set to D your visitors will need only to select a nickname to be able to chat.

License

ChatPat is freeware without any limitations. You can do anything you want with it.