vBulletin How To: New and Improved Chat

[Matt]

Unless anyone has any other topics that are worth covering, this will be the last installment of the "How To" series getting us ready for the move. Today we'll look at the new Chat capabilities of the forum. The chat room is a great place to hang out with other members and also share images of pickups or cards you're considering picking up for discussion.

The new chat has too many bells and whistles to cover here (full documentation can be found here) but I will focus just on the core functionality and also explain some more advanced messaging options.

At any time, you can see how many Net54 users are in the chat, by simply looking at the NavBar. There, a link showing "X Users in Chat" will show the number of users and by clicking on that link you will join the chat as well:



If you want to know exactly who is in the chat, you can see that information in the "Chat Statistics" section at the bottom of the homepage http://www.net54baseball.com):



Once inside the chat you'll notice many buttons and options, but the basic functionality of sending a message is straightforward - type into the text box at the bottom and click send (or hit the Enter key).

What is less straightforward is addressing messages to a single chat participant. In fact, when you click (left-click) on a user's name you will see the following menu, with no fewer then 3 ways to send that user a message:



Personal Message in Lobby sends a public message that everyone else in the lobby can see, but adds an indication of who you are sending the message to (sample in above screenshot). This is useful in avoiding ambiguity as to who's question or comment you are responding to.

both Private and Whisper send a message that only the intended recipient can read, the difference being that Whisper does it in the current chat window (sample in above screenshot) and Private opens a new window (below). Not even the All Powerful Leon can read the message when you use either of these options



Thanks to Doug C for his help in testing the new chat.