Web www.gerd-tentler.de
Version 3.26 (released Mar. 11, 2023) [Download]

Usage

Extract the files to your webserver and adapt the configuration (config_main.inc.php, shoutbox.css) to your needs. Then include shoutbox.inc.php in your website (PHP file) where you want your chat-box to appear. ShoutBox will try to create the necessary MySQL table automatically, according to your database settings in config_main.inc.php. If you don't set a database, ShoutBox will use the data directory to save the chat-box entries, so make sure that PHP has write permission to this directory.

ShoutBox supports the following languages:

  Bulgarian  -  lang_bg.inc
  Czech  -  lang_cs.inc
  Dutch  -  lang_nl.inc
  English  -  lang_en.inc
  Esperanto  -  lang_eo.inc
  Finnish  -  lang_fi.inc
  French  -  lang_fr.inc
  German  -  lang_de.inc
  Greek  -  lang_gr.inc
  Hebrew  -  lang_he.inc
  Italian  -  lang_it.inc
  Russian  -  lang_ru.inc
  Slovenian  -  lang_sl.inc
  Spanish  -  lang_es.inc
  Swedish  -  lang_sv.inc
  Swahili  -  lang_sw.inc

If you translate it into your language, please let me know! ;-)

Since version 1.8, there are two configuration files:
  • config_main.inc.php is the main configuration file; you must adapt it to your needs
  • config_local.inc.php is only used for offline testing; if you don't test offline, you don't need to modify this file
NOTE: You should change the administrator password (config_main.inc.php) for security reasons! Also please note that you need PHP 4.1.0 or higher with session support if you want to log in as administrator.

In the configuration you can enable or disable the input of HTML tags, URLs, and UBB codes. If you enable UBB or HTML, but disable URLs, the UBB code [url] and the HTML tag <A> won't work. In order to make them work, you have to enable URLs, too. However, you should consider that this will make your chat-box more vulnerable to malicious URLs.

NOTE: For security reasons, it's strongly recommended to disable HTML. By default, HTML and URLs are disabled. Enable them on your own risk!

If UBB is enabled (it is by default), images can be inserted with the UBB code [img], and if HTML is enabled, they can be inserted with the <IMG> tag. Note that if the image width is bigger than the chat-box width, ShoutBox will try to resize the image.

You can also enable or disable unique message IDs which help to protect your chat-box from spam bots. Please note that like the admin feature this feature needs PHP 4.1.0 or higher with session support. If message IDs are enabled (they are by default), you must start a session in your PHP script where you included shoutbox.inc.php. This has to be done before any headers are sent:
if(!session_id()) session_start();
Additionally you can enable or disable user agent checks against spam bots. Please note that the Apache variable HTTP_USER_AGENT is required for this check, so if you are using another HTTP server, make sure that this variable is supported or disable this check.

Here's an example how you can add the chat-box to your website:
<?php if(!session_id()) session_start(); ?>
<html>
<head>
...
</head>
<body>
...
<?php
  $pathToShoutBox = 'tools/shoutbox';
  include("$pathToShoutBox/shoutbox.inc.php");
?>
...
</body>
</html>
The file must be saved with the extension .php, for instance chat.php, and of course your webserver must have PHP installed.

$pathToShoutBox is the path where you extracted the ShoutBox files. In this example, it is a relative path to the subfolder "tools/shoutbox", but of course you can also use an absolute path instead.

Don't forget to set the $boxFolder variable within the configuration file accordingly - this has to be a WEB path, though. In this example, the chat-box is located within the subfolder "tools/shoutbox" of the website, so this is also the correct setting for the $boxFolder variable.

It is not necessary to use a MySQL database, the chat-box will also work without it. But if you want to use a database, you must adapt the configuration file and enter the credentials there.

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