Suggestion: Restore link to #sonicstadium

[Frogging101]

I sent emails and private messages about this to the administration back in December. I think they got lost or something. So I'll post it here, because other people might be interested too.

I've been a regular user of the #sonicstadium IRC channel for over two years now. It's not dead, but it generally has a low level of activity. I think the main issue is a lack of visibility. SSMB used to display a green icon at the top left which opened a web-based IRC client. It's not there anymore, and it wasn't very effective to begin with; when the boards went down, many who came to #sonicstadium said that they had never noticed the icon, and were completely unaware of the channel's existence.

My proposal is that a link be placed in the navigation bar on SSMB that opens a new window containing the web client, as it did before (though separate from the SSR stream). Not only that, but to improve engagement it should have the current number of active users displayed next to it. That sounds like a tall order, but I've already done half of the work in that department; I've written a plugin for the IRC bot that keeps this file up to date with the current number of active users in #sonicstadium (where anyone who has talked in the last 15 minutes is counted as active). The file is updated every minute. Here's what it could look like:

That is, if you have no creativity or web design experience, and did it in 5 minutes with your browser's HTML editor. But that's the gist of it.

I am by no means a front-end web developer and I have never used IPB, so I don't know what the options are in terms of grabbing text from other locations. I assume server-side includes or even Javascript in the browser could do it, but I'm not sure. And a liberal application of regex to ensure that someone can't inject code into the website (!). The file is hosted on a reliable VPS with a fast connection, and I can add or modify anything necessary to make it easier (and/or more secure) for the site to parse/retrieve it. I'm sure something can be figured out in any case.

I want to see #sonicstadium become the official TSS community chat room again

P.S. My nickname in the channel is FluffyFoxeh.

Edited March 11, 2016 by Frogging101

[petri152]

Wow, that's awesome! Being someone who is always on the chat, I +1 this.

[Haalyle]

I really, really like that suggestion. I'm all for this.

[TCB]

You should know Frogging that this was something I was hoping to get more visibility with for a while, I just don't have the skills like you do to make it happen. With that said adding a Chat/IRC tab alongside the others would be a great addition to get more people to notice that avenue of discussion. I would also recommend using KiwiIRC as the default on site client, or failing that set up Mibbit.

[sonicDX]

That is a really awesome idea, and I support it. Your design looks cool!

Didn't even know there was a TSS chat, anyway. I would gladly use it.