First Glance: LiveZilla chat system
Hosting companies today are almost expected to have live chat available. So the question comes up quite often… which one? There are many paid chat systems out there and a few open source as well. Today we’re glancing at LiveZilla one of the latter…
LiveZilla setup was a little different than I expected. I’m accustomed to setup the server and then the client. Or more often the server is the client as they often use webpages as the client interface. But LiveZilla comes as a Windows app. I had a little trouble installing it on Windows 7. But selecting properties and telling it to use Vista SP2 compatibility mode, and run as administrator allowed it to install. To be able to save settings, you do need to run as admin I was later told by the program. Since I don’t use FTP (I SFTP over SSH), I had it create the server files locally and sent them with WinSCP. Then comes the usual fun … I had to log into the control panel and create a database and user. Once I did you let the server admin client create the files and validate the server. I also decided I wanted to use my existing images, so I went into the images options and told it what to use. And lastly I replaced an include file with the old crafty syntax code with a new LiveZilla version… and poof it was running.
I’ve been testing it out, and hopefully will have an update to this article shortly. Thus far it does the job, albiet not too quickly. In completely unscientific testing, there’s a signifigant delay from the time either the operator or the use types in a line, and when it is shown on the other’s screen. Changing the settings to 1 second each (3 for operator, 10 for visitor) has not had much of an impact. I’ve watched the client side refresh repeatedly when a reply has been posted, and there’s no update for many cycles. I’m going to load it on another server just to see if there’s something going on with that particular server.
One note: A nice feature of LiveZilla is the GeoIP mapping of where the visitor is located. But to use this you need to go into your server config, and enable it per server. It’s off by default. Once you do that it works, and is pretty “neat” if nothing else.
You can download LiveZilla and try it out yourself at http://www.livezilla.net/home/ — it’s free, so what have you got to lose?
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About: Robert: Robert Porter holds MCSE, A+, Net+, Security+, and multiple CIW certifications. He has been in the hosting industry for more than a decade and is founder of Lagniappe Internet L.L.C., a privately owned, completely debt free, hosting company based out of New Orleans. Robert's background includes 25+ years in programming, databases, networking and systems administration. |
