upload

Fast image uploading

We have added a new feature: fast image uploading. This feature is based on the client size resizing.

The normal process of uploading images is the following:

  • chatter chooses an image
  • this image is uploaded to server
  • this image is resized
  • the resized image is sent back to chat

As you see, if you choose a huge image (50 megas for instance), uploading process can take time since you need to upload 50 megas. This can be a real pain with mobile phones.

We have introduced the resizing on client side before uploading to server.

So now the process is:

  • chatter chooses an image
  • this image is resized
  • this resized image is uploaded to server
  • the resized image is sent back to chat

As you can see, the process is much quicker. Besides it allows to upload big size photos since they will be resized before.

Now the caveat of this method is that the final image has JPEG format only. So you upload an animated GIF, you will get a static JPEG picture

emoji

utf8mb4 encoding for emojis storage

We changed our encoding system form UTF-8 to UTF8mb4. This little change will allow you to use emojis

πŸ˜€ πŸ˜ƒ πŸ˜„ 😁 πŸ˜† πŸ˜… πŸ˜‚ 🀣 πŸ₯² ☺️ 😊 πŸ˜‡ πŸ™‚ πŸ™ƒ πŸ˜‰ 😌 😍 πŸ₯° 😘 πŸ˜— πŸ˜™ 😚 πŸ˜‹ πŸ˜› 😝 😜 πŸ€ͺ 🀨 🧐 πŸ€“ 😎 πŸ₯Έ 🀩 πŸ₯³ 😏 πŸ˜’ 😞 πŸ˜” 😟 πŸ˜• πŸ™ ☹️ 😣 πŸ˜– 😫 😩 πŸ₯Ί 😒 😭 😀 😠 😑 🀬…

inside your chat configs such as messages, room descriptions, news etc..

news

How to alternate news in the chat ?

News allows you to display special infos in your chat. You can set news at certain date/time, you can set the interval and associate a news to a room.

But you could not alternante news: imagine that scenario. You have 3 news whose content is “Here is news 1”, “Here is news 2 “, “Here is news 3” and you would like to display randomly one of these 3 news every 3 minutes.

The solution is to create 1 singe “big” news and separate the news with the character |

In our case the content of the news would be:

Here is news 1|Here is news 2|Here is news 3

That way the chat will pick up randomly one part (separated by | ) and display it into the chat.

angry

Forbidden words in private chats

We added a new feature today: you can filter differently forbidden words in public and private chats.

For instance, you can forbid rude words usage in public chat and allow rude words in public chat.

You can still put actions when forbidden word is found: ‘nothing’,’hide’,’kick’,’ban12hours’,’ban24hours’

You can find this new feature in your chat admin panel, under “forbidden words”

spam

Filter junk mail

We have added a new security tool when user registers to chat:

We prevent spammers to register: disposable/junk mails addresses are now forbidden to register.

A disposable mail is a kind of public mail whose role is used to confirm an user. One of the best known disposable mail provider is yopmail. Our list contains more than 3200 junk mail providers.

This option is automatic: there is nothing to be activated on your chat admin panel.

Filtering by age

We have added a new filter called “filter by age”. You can enable it from your /chatadmin -> config (“Filter by age”)

filter by age feature

Of course, you need to enable “display ages” so you can use that feature. Age sorting is ascendant only.

ddos

Chat and Anti DDOS solution

Some of chats may have that message:

Error 1020

 Ray ID: 6a0f8eb32b2eb65f β€’ 2021-10-20 04:38:34 UTC

Access denied

This is an anti ddos message : it means that the chat account was disabled for 2 hours because it was generating too much unnatural trafic. Mostly of time it creates >30,000 entries / minute.

Our filters have isolated it and maintains it offline during the attack. After 2 hours, chat should be back online again.

Solutions for anti ddos attacks

There is no easy solution to counter an anti ddos attack. We suggest you use anti ddos attack on your site placing it behind a proxy that allows to filter many bad ips. The most popular solution is cloudflare.

You can also use some server modules such as modEvasive for apache. Nginx has its own module integrated.

Also the most radical solution would be to host the chat on your own server, which means you need the source code version.

ban user

New Ban features

We added 2 new ban features

  1. In roles, we added notAffectedByRudeWords which means that a role (moderator or admin for instance) can use rude words without being censured (or kicked out/banned).
    You can define different actions per rude word like : nothing / hide the rude word / kick out the user / ban the user


  2. When user has been kicked out or banned because of a rude word, we store now this bad word.
    You can get the history and the bad word used in your chatadmin / banned section under field called “sentence”

email

Sending customized emails

Many people asked for the possibility of sending customized emails. The emails are sent when the chat uses the user registration and more precisely:

  • when a new user registers to the chat (register)
  • when an users forgets his password and requests the password (forgotten)

In these 2 cases, you can customize email sending.

If you useΒ JWTΒ or if you use guests only, this feature has no effect at all.Important: You email template can include dynamic fields:

  • {{email}}Β : the email of the user
  • {{username}}Β : the username of the user
  • {{password}}Β : the password of the user
  • {{confirmation}}Β : this is the Confirmation link : YOU MUST USE THAT in “register” email, so users can click the confirmation link to enter the chat

Ex: Hello {{username}}. Your password is {{password}}


Notice: If you want to include images, all images needs to be remote and starting with https://.
Warning. You cannot use classical HTML for email. You canΒ read more infoΒ about html and email.

Who sends the email ?

Our SMTP server sends emails, so our sender is visible ([email protected]), if you want to change the sender (from) email, we need to add your domain name in our white list, and you need to confirm that with a new DNS entry. Since it is a manual process, there is one time fee for it of 20 euros (please contact us if you need that feature)