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Devblog related to projects hydlide is working on
This blog is made by Hydlide and is there to keep you up to date with the latest developments on the sites hydlide.nl and reasonexperts.com (a propellerhead reason 6 tutorial site)
Chatroom
Posted on 16 Jan 2012
with the previous website, thesondofreason.net, we had a custom made chat room. This chatroom was a custom fork based on ajax chat (an ajax based chatroom which can be found here:https://blueimp.net/ajax/)
The main issues here were pretty big. First of all, there was a major problem with the ajax handler itself, and second it needed more of a port to blend into the phpbb3 forum we were running. After the initial launch of the newly improved chatroom, it had some bandwidth issues here and there. The only positive side effect was that most of the database queries had been improved, and the whole ajax library class was rewritten to optimize the performance of the code itself.
The whole chatroom was running from a dedicated box, meaning, I had all the freedom I had to make changes into the chatroom without having the limitations of the webserver (ok... bandwidth was limited).
With the new setup I am going for (in this case, ditching the dedicated box, and hosting the website at a webhosting company) I need to make a few changes here and there since I am currently coming across a few limitations:
- limited Storage
- File Input / Output
- Headers
- the php configuration which apperently runs some weird security module
With all that being said, there are some custom modifications which writes to a single text file. This option needed to be modified hence the file system of the webserver does not alway like it when I am writing contents into a website (same thing goes for instance with the cache folders etc).
By setting the right CHMOD flags on the file system, this could be fixed. However, I have limited the whole settings so the file can be written, not to be created (else this would be a security risk).
The headers is a total different story. Apperently some parts of the website act differently then they they did on the dedicated box. The same explination is applicable here, since the apache configuration works different then my own dedicated webserver I had. By removing certain headers (php function header()) I got rid of most of the error messages "header has already been sent".
The limited file storage (2gb) is a really big issue here. With the old setup there was basically no limit what so ever. However, with the new setup there is. One of the choices I still need to make is what to do with the drop box implementation. In the current state I have disabled the feature, however I still need to rethink over what to do with this one.
Lastly, the login box... this usually would redirect to the forum board. However, this also lead to a new flaw itself. Apperently theres a redirect inside the forums now, that suddenly 'cuts' the current connection. I am putting all the blame on the security module that is installed on the webserver, since there are tons of error message reported that would say that the "post data has been reset".
So instead, I am redirecting to the chatroom itself (as it should) and I am handling all the user authentication parts from there. Just another small step to inner connect the chatroom with the forum.
So, thats all about the chatroom implementation for now... Hopefully I can start working on some improvements here and there with the new situation in mind.
You can find the new implemented chatroom here: reasonexperts chatroom