You only have to copy/paste few lines of code to have a nice working chat. It doesn't require MySQL or any SQL database, messages and nicknames are simply stored in files. No problems with firewalls, this script is based on HTTP so you only need a web browser and an internet connection. (everyone can easily chat!) No problems with none-latin characteres ! Are you Russian, Japanese, Turk, Chinese, or Arabic? Whatever language you speak, phpfreechat will nicely display your characters because it uses XML with UTF-8 to encode characters.
AJAX technology is used to smoothly refresh (no flicker) and display the chat and nickname zone. Messages and nicknames are stored into a simple filesystem, so that server resources are saved as much as possible. Bandwidth is preserved because the server never transmits the same data twice, only new messages are transmitted.
You can write your own customized CSS stylesheets, to completely change the appearance of your chat. All chat functionalities are customizable. For example, you can change the messages refresh time, you can ban users for changing their usernames, etc. The plugin system allows you to write your own storage routines. For example, you can write a plugin to store the conversations into your database.
phpFreeChat is an opensource (LGPL) program, so that you can freely use it and modify it. I just ask, by gratitude, to keep the linkback logo on the pages of your chat. See the license page for detailed explanations.
All phpFreeChat commands are inspired by the irc protocol, and its interface is inspired by mIRC and XChat, so that users won't be disoriented.
Technologies used by phpFreeChat are: