Hi, and welcome! This page is designed to guide you through the various features of pChat, and help you to add more fun to your experiences here. There are a lot of features to cover, so let's get started, shall we?

NEW!

Membership

A new feature that I've added is that of membership, which has the following benefits:

• Your preferred user name is reserved for you.
• Anything you teach Morti to say is retained.
• Members don't have "Guest_" added to the front of their names.

Ask Morti

After many months of trying to "re-invent the wheel" to write a chat bot, I finally gave in to the more larcenous nature of my soul, and found an AI script that I liked, so I "stole" it. Not to worry, though. I've found out that it's what's called "orphan code", which means it's no longer supported or maintained, and therefore fair game. I huffed, and puffed, and bent the script to my will, and Viola! Morti is born! There's a button near the chat bar in both the main screen, and the PM window that you can use to pose queries to Morti from any room you happen to be in. He'll pop into the room, answer your question, and pop back out again, like magic! Morti is still in "Alpha Testing" stage, and so will have bugs. If you find one, please use my Contact Page to let me know.

Now please bear in mind that Morti is knowledgeable, but sort of shy. And he's been taught not to speak unless spoken to, so if you want to talk to Morti, you need to use one of the following "commands":

• /ask Morti
• /a Morti  
• /tell Morti
• /t Morti  
• /help

You can now ask Morti for a few answers by typing "/help" in the chat bar. At the present time, he only has two topics that he can provide information on, but plans are in the works to expand this. Right now, Morti can share insights on himself, and on the pChat script and it's features/functions. Try typing "/help Morti" or "/help pChat" into the chat bar for more info.

NEW!

Wiki, Google and Search

A new feature that's been added to pChat, through Morti's bot interface, is the ability to perform web searches right from the chatroom, from either Google, Wikipedia, or ask.com. To use this feature, simply type "/wiki [subject]", "/google [subject]", or "/search [subject]" where [subject] is the search term you want to use. In the case of the wiki or google commands, Morti will reply with a link to the proper page, which opens in a new window. The search command causes Morti to search ask.com for answers to your question, and return the "most popular" answer directly to the page, along with a link to the full page. For best results with the search command, it's best to phrase your request in the form of a question.

Buzz and Flash Icons

There are now two icons to the right of any online users that are only visible when you're logged in. They are used to Buzz and Flash that user, to get their attention. To use them, simply click on the proper icon. If you want to shake someone's page, I'm afraid you'll have to use the /shake command. There will be no shortcut for the really annoying one, Sorry.

Chat Commands

I've added some commands that everyone can use. There are also a couple of "admin only" commands, as well, but I won't be discussing those here, since they can't be used if you're not an admin anyway. Below is the list of commands and their syntax, along with a brief description:

• Buzz - /buzz [name] - Plays a sound in the target user's browser. Good for getting someone's attention.
• Flash - /flash [name] - rapidly rotates the background colors on the target user's screen. Another attention getter.
• Shake - /shake [name] - rapidly moves the target user's main chat window. This one can get really annoying, so use sparingly, please.

I'm also working on an "ignore" feature for the chat room. Once this is in place, I'll put a description of it's use here, as well.

As with some of the other features here, I'll be looking out for any abuse, and will remove any feature that is being misused. Let's play nice, so this won't have to happen.

C o l o r s in your text:

One of the ways to add some fun to your chat is to spice up your chat text with colors. This is reasonably simple to do, especially if you've spent any time at all on BB sites or forums. The format is somewhat like what many of these forum sites use, but is even simpler.

Here's an example:

You type: [yellow]Hi there,[/yellow] [cyan]Fred![/cyan]
you get : Hi there, Fred!

As you can see, it's fairly easy to set the colors in your text, and there are a lot of colors to choose from. Below is a table of roughly half of the colors, along with the symbols to use to get them. There's also a color picker button in the lower left corner of the chat page proper. [img]"images/color.png" width="20" height="20">

Emoticons[img]"emotes/smile1.gif" width="15" height="15" alt=":)" border="0">

Another way to "fun up" the chat room is through the use of emoticons. Everyone who has visited either chat rooms or forums before has as least passing familiarity with emoticons/emotes/smilies. Well, they exist here, as well. We have a moderately wide selection of them, and most of them are fairly standard in their usage, but some of them aren't, I've created an emotes panel, to help automate the process. There are over 200 different emotes, so I figure that this is easier than folks trying to figure it out by trial and error. Just locate the emotes button by the chat bar to toggle the emotes panel ([img]"images/emotes.png" width="20" height="20">), find the emote you want, and click it. The rest is automatic.

Private Messages

I've FINALLY worked out the vast majority of the bugs in the Private Messaging system! Feel free to test it out, if there are enough folks in the room to try it. Basically, using the private message system is simple, and works across chat rooms, as long as the user you're trying to contact is still online. Just find the user on the list in the upper-left corner of the chat room window, and click on their name. A prompt window will come up, asking what message you want to send to the other person as an invitation. Fill that out (or leave the default invitation intact), click OK, and a new panel will open. If the other person accepts, a new panel will open for them, and you will both be in your own little "closet", within the house. At present, only two people can be in the same "closet" at the same time, but I intend on changing that to allow multiple users, through invitation. You also can only be in one "closet" at a time, as well, but I'm working on that, also.

Links and Images

Let's say you're chatting with some friends, and you want to share a website or image with them. Normally, if you posted the URL to the window, they'd have to copy the link, paste into a new browser window, and go through a bit of hassle to see it. Well, no more. All you have to do is add a link tag, and it turns into a clickable link in the chat window, that opens a new browser window to view the website or image. Here's an example:

Suppose you want to share a web page at http://www.geekcavecreations.com/  If you type just that in, it will just come out as text, causing everyone to have to do the whole "copy/paste" thing. Instead, type in the following: [link=http://www.geekcavecreations.com/]My Web Page[/link], and everyone will get a nice, clickable link that looks like this: My Web Page. Cool, huh?

If you want to provide a link, but don't care about the title words, you can also use:
[link]http://www.geekcavecreations.com/[/link], and it will come out as:
http://www.geekcavecreations.com/
Either way, you have a link others can use, making it easier for your friends to enjoy the chat.

Images work more or less the same way. To post an image, just use [img]http://your.image.url[/img] to display the image you want. it'll look something like: [img]"http://www.geekcavecreations.com/images/ROG.gif" width="150"> and will be a size limited image that links to the full sized original.

I've added links near the chat bar to help with using links and images. Just click on the associated icon to begin the process.

Please note that both links and images are subject to filtering. You can read up on filtering in the next section.

Just to let everyone know, if the links and images features are abused, I will just disable them. Don't mess things up for everyone.

Filtering:

You now have the option to filter out the following things:

• Chat Language
• Images
• Links

I'm trying to make sure this chat room is as family friendly as possible. After all, we wouldn't want our children or grandchildren subjected to hamster porn, would we?

In the "Status Panel", you should see three checkboxes. To activate any of the above listed filters, just place a check-mark in the proper box. It happens "on the fly", so you don't have to log out to change them.

Chat Formatting:

You also have the option to format your chat text in the following ways:

• [b]BOLD text[/b]
• [i]ITALIC text[/i]
• [u]UNDERLINE text[/u]
• [s]STRIKETHROUGH text[/s]

I've looked for one of those "Rich Text" scripts, to allow for more options, but nothing I've seen really seemed to work the way I wanted, so we're stuck with simple formatting for now. I'll look into a font-size adjuster in the near future, and maybe even a font-name selector, as well. [img]"emotes/biggrin.gif" width="15" height="15">

There are more features in the works, and there are Admin-only features that I won't be covering here, but suffice it to say that, for an Auto Mechanic of 25 years, who's self-taught in PHP, this chat has turned out rather well. And as my abilities increase, this chatroom will do nothing but get better and better. Keep watch, and see! [img]"emotes/biggrin.gif" width="15" height="15" alt=":D" border="0">