Chat

The chat module has additional settings which may be changed by an administrator in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Chat. They depend on the chat method which has been selected.

Chat method

You can select the any default chat method.

_images/chat_method.png

Ajax

This is the default method. It works everywhere but if many people are chatting it can put a large load on the server. Its particular settings are:

  • Refresh user list - choose the number of seconds after which the user list is refreshed
  • Disconnect timeout - choose the number of seconds after which we detect a user has disconnected.

Normal method

The particular settings for this method are:

  • Refresh room - choose the number of seconds after which the room is refreshed
  • Update method - choose how to update the chatroom - “Keep alive” or “Stream” strategy. Stream works better but your sever might not support it.

Chat server daemon

A daemon is a program that runs all the time in the background. In this case it’s a PHP script, listening to a particular port on your server, accepting and giving out chat information.If you intend to use the chat activity a lot, then you should consider using a chat server daemon to reduce server load.Its particular settings are:

  • Server name
  • Server IP address
  • Server port
  • Max users

Then you need to start the chat daemon script from the command line:

cd moodle/mod/chat
php chatd.php –start &