Need Advice On Chat Software

[rugman]

I’m advising a friend of mine who’s going to be setting up a general conversation chat room on his server. Unknown number of at-the-same-time users. The thing is that it needs to be flexible and allow users the ability to have emoticons (smileys), preferably some formatting capability, maybe small image transfer capability. Think something like IRC without the netsplits and such.

I’m rather unfamiliar with chatware, my only real experience having been with IRC from some time ago. Maybe there’s even better stuff out there. Please advise me.

But one thing needs to be certain: security. My friend needs to be able to control access to people who apply, present credentials, and follow his rules. He doesn’t want the chat room to be open to just anybody.

Does anybody know of chatware that can provide these things?

[DeathXI]

From my knowledge, IRC would be his best option. I don't believe there's better out there for what he wants, but I'm not entirely sure. Google could help.

[rugman]

Oh fer chrissakes. Anybody wanna take a stab at who my friend is? Maybe why I’m asking the question?

Here?

Clue: chat.

Duhhhh.

Come on, people. Help me out here.

[BlackSwirl]

Why didn't you just say so? :)

I don't have any professional experience with chat software but I thought I would at least try to help. After reviewing the requirements, here are two that I found that may work.

1. http://www.globalchat.com/chat-hosting.html
You can customize it, password protect, ban users, integrate with various databases, file transfer support, customized emoticons, etc. The link above plus the "full feature set" page gives you the details. The only thing is that I don't know if you can set it up on your own server, because the site says it uses its own servers.

2. http://www.realchat.com
All the features are clearly indicated at this site so I won't go over them here. I didn't see any mention of file transfer support but most other things are offered.

Good luck.

[editor]

I happen to know somewhat on IT business so regarding your question:

IRC is for you the best option.download MIRC,choose a name for your chat,become the moderator with all the power and you are set to go.
You can see IP of folks who enter the chat, you can set a certain amount of folks to enter the chat,you can make the chat invite only etc.

If you wana be really different. Buy a Mac and use iChat and you are even better off cause the possibilities with that are endless.
Add camera and you can chat with 3 different folks on a visual base. and even more trough chat.