Written on December 15, 2008 by  /  with 12 comments  /  in the Open Source category.

Open Source Live Chat Software

Needing some guidance with your SEO strategy? Hire my SEO Consulting services today! Call me @ (801) 899-3527 - Click here

Web Messenger is an open source live chat support software available under the Eclipse Public License v1.0. Basically what you can do with this software is have some sort of button or image on your website for “Live Support”, when your visitor clicks on that button up pops up a window where this open source chat messenger comes in action. There are many services which can give your website this type of functionality, but with a high monthly charge. Finally there is an open source solution that you can customize on your own and not be bound to a contract! Here are the details you should know about this open source product:

Server requirements

A webserver or web hosting account running on any major Operating System
PHP (5.x and above) with MySQL support
MySQL 5.0 and above

Supported browsers

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0+
Mozilla Firefox 1.0+
Mozilla 1.4, 1.7
Opera 7.0+
Safari 1.2.5+
Netscape 6.0+
Google Chrome 0.2.149.29+
iPhone 1.1.4+

Main features

Unlimited operators, chats, and users
Priority queue of visitors
Chat button for email signatures
Differing buttons on same website
English and russian are supported
Reconnect automatically if the internet connection went down

Chat window

Agent and visitor “Typing Indicator”
Agent photo
Chat transcript emails
Sound and Visual alerts
“Leave a message” when you are away
Customize chat with your Logo, Name etc.
Unicode support for multiple languages
Quickly convert text to hyperlinks in chat
Not blocked by pop-up blockers

Operator abilities

Web-based Operator Console
Canned messages for speed and consistency
Track where your visitors clicked from to get to your website (refer URL)
Chat conversation history with search
Linking to previous visits, instant access to previous chats
Reassign/Transfer chat ownership
Mark/Highlight nuisance visitors
Administrator can view active chats
Information about visitor: first message, address, browser
Administrator can take over the chat

New in version 1.5

Chat Window themes support, select your default one
Generate button for specific theme
2 pre-installed themes
UI for easy theme creation and customization
UI for system translation
Geolocation link on each IP
Agents permissions

This screenshot gives you an idea of what the administration interface is like. This is the Visitors section where you can view your queue of awaiting visitors waiting to talk to you! Pretty cool stuff!

You can go to the demo page to see what the user end and admin end interfaces are like. If you have any success using this open source script let me know. I’d like to see who’s out there using this!

12 responses to this article so far...

Leave a comment