Shouting, chatting, tagging, etc. (Again.)

TRI · Post by **TRI** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 10:06 pm

Yes, I know this is a perpetual topic, but it hasn't been covered too recently.

In the past few months a few of my readers have emailed me saying they'd like some way to interact with each other. I could just start giving them each other's email addresses but I think they'd prefer some kind of chat/shout/tag-box/board/widget.

I've looked around but I'd kind of like to hear what other people recommend.

So far Cbox looks okay but I still think what I'd really like would just be a simple perl script I could upload to my ISP's space. Unfortunately I haven't found much along those lines. Could just be that I don't know where to look: so far my experience with perl scripts is installing Autokeen and I've never tried looking for a script before.

So anyone know a good place to look for one of those? Failing that, what's a good box to go with?

Sly Eagle · Post by **Sly Eagle** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 10:36 pm

I got mine from here: http://www.myshoutbox.com/

The bad thing is it tend to go down every now end then, randomly without warning. However, you get a nice variety of choices for color and post length and such. I can't seem to get it to accept "bad words", although I've turned that filter off many times. It's annoying to see "***ume" and the like.

CottontailCouriers · Post by **CottontailCouriers** » Mon Jan 08, 2007 10:42 pm

I got mine from: http://oggix.com/

Never goes down. Very nice selection of colors to match with current website layout. The script is easy and provided. And you can go onto oggix to log in and get other interesting free things they provide as well as monitoring the tags on your tagboard. E.G. someone writes something completely inappropriate, you can delete it manually.

Sorry, I know nothing about perl.

Kirb · Post by **Kirb** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 2:36 am

C-box has my vote.

Dr Neo Lao · Post by **Dr Neo Lao** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 4:13 am

I'm gonna swim against the flow and recommend a forum.

Basic - request a forum slot here on CG. Easy as and requires almost no set-up from you.

A little less basic - grab a free forum from one of those forum providers (forumer, invisionfree, freeforum, etc). Extremely customizeable, you can make them as easy or as complex as you want, you can keep the basic skin or go all out and make it match your current site. You can set it up as a guestbook (no membership required), or you can make it a little more complex and have bonuses for members who participate with bonus art and such. I use and recommend invisionfree.

Slightly complicated - you could go to phpBB.com directly, grab the code for a forum and instal your own forum, but I don't think you can do that with a basic CG account. This would be the option if you have your own hosting package. I wouldn't suggest this one, but it's there if you're interested.

Of the options, all of them are as dificult as adding a link on your indextemplate and adding a link back to the comic on the forum. Dead easy and better than a shoutbox as far as I'm concerned. (And you can always just delete it if it doesn't work!)

Black Sparrow · Post by **Black Sparrow** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 5:19 am

Keep in mind that it is very unlikely that people will bother signing up for a forum (I believe the statistic often quoted is 1% of 1% of your readers). While one will be nice in the later stages of your fanbase, I suggest you stave off getting a forum at the moment until you get a tagboard, and it gets overcrowded. I know I'm much more likely to leave a couple messages on a tagboard than to sign up for yet another forum account, no matter how much I like the comic.

The one I use is Saybox, but lately they switched to slipping pop-up ads onto my site, so I'm thinking of switching services myself.

Glarryg · Post by **Glarryg** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 6:14 am

I'm a Cbox man, and I'd recommend it. All you do is sign up and copy the code onto whatever page(s) you want. They have ads, but (right now) they're just links on the box itself, so they're not really in the way or anything.

When I first put it up, there were a handful of people that gushed over it and swore they'd be "whoring it out." Most of them only posted once; hardly anybody's posted since Thanksgiving. On the one hand, it makes the front page look a little sad, but on the other hand, at least nobody's taking a link to a dead forum, which is all the more disappointing after you wait for the page to load up.

Glarryg

Rkolter · Post by **Rkolter** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 7:28 am

I am all but entirely satisfied with http://www.Tag-board.org - for free, without advertising, you get a pretty good array of tools. You can block IPs, tag spammers, they keep a spam list themselves, you can filter words, you can prevent certain names from being used, you get a pretty easy to use history... I like it a lot.

Also, their html is pretty customizable, and while they tend to be a bit slow sometimes, they're very rarely actually down.

MrEff · Post by **MrEff** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 7:36 am

I had a TagBoard at one point but I found after a time it just got overrun with spam and bots on a daily basis. I do have my own forum, (that I got from "Talk About Comics") that gets hits here and there, but I also set it up so you didn't have to actually register to post on it.... So far it hasn't been that bad of an option...

-MrEff-

just my .02

DJMayhem · Post by **DJMayhem** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 11:26 am

if you do have your own webspace, the CJ tagboard (google for it) is basically the premium version of cbox. I actually planned to offer this to the cornstalkers, but it never took.

[geoduck] · Post by **[geoduck]** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 12:08 pm

CottontailCouriers wrote:I got mine from: http://oggix.com/

Never goes down.

That's not entirely true; my oggix subscription has had outages. But only occasionally, and otherwise I've been happy with it, and would recommend it.

And as others have said, you'll get more participents with a tagboard than with a forum. I mostly use my forum anymore to post minor plot spoilers/explanations.

Garneta · Post by **Garneta** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 2:14 pm

Black Sparrow wrote:The one I use is Saybox, but lately they switched to slipping pop-up ads onto my site, so I'm thinking of switching services myself.

Yeah, it was pretty good before they put those ads up, too. At least they don't show up all the time, I think it's one for about every 20 pageviews or something...still annoying as all getout, though!

Americangothic · Post by **Americangothic** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 2:28 pm

http://chatter.flooble.com/

I use the Chatterbox and have it set so that it floods the whole width of my webpage at the bottom...it's easier to read that way than in one of those little small boxes. Mine gets a decent amount of traffic and it keeps people from flooding me with email.

EvilChihuahua · Post by **EvilChihuahua** » Tue Jan 09, 2007 3:37 pm

I use Cbox.

Warofwinds · Post by **Warofwinds** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 9:09 am

I use myshoutbox, though I am considering switching to Cbox or Oggix. I like the way they look on other people's sites. But yeah, I definitely recommend some sort of talkybox on the site. I rarely get anyone posting in my forum, but I get bunches on my shoubox.

Mon Ami · Post by **Mon Ami** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 9:13 am

Teammayhem wrote:if you do have your own webspace, the CJ tagboard (google for it) is basically the premium version of cbox. I actually planned to offer this to the cornstalkers, but it never took.

If one does not have their own webspace (like mine that is hosted on CG) why can they not use CJ tagboards?

Dr Legostar · Post by **Dr Legostar** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 9:13 am

every tagboard i've ever had eventually starts throwing up popups on my page, and I've gotten sick of it, so it's gone.

Mon Ami · Post by **Mon Ami** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 9:14 am

legostargalactica wrote:every tagboard i've ever had eventually starts throwing up popups on my page, and I've gotten sick of it, so it's gone.

That is what happened to me as well, and why I deleted it.

Perhaps a guestbook is the better idea.

Biev · Post by **Biev** » Wed Jan 10, 2007 6:51 pm

Tri, I've been meaning to bug you about getting a shoutbox, cause I know I'd give you a lot more feedback if I did. If you weren't on my forum, you probably couldn't even tell I was still reading, could you? : P

And then once you get a shoutbox I can guilt you into writing in mine more, so it's win-win : P

Well, on FS I use the free version of Cbox and I like it so far. You can adapt the size and there's a few color choices, so it's not too ugly, and I've never had any spam. It's never been down either. The only problem I've ever had with it is that if I start reloading my page a lot (which I do when I update to check little details) the bottom frame sometimes disappears but it looks like a Safari bug.

Eve Z. · Post by **Eve Z.** » Thu Jan 11, 2007 4:21 am

I had my shoutbox from http://www.shoutmix.com/ It's a pretty good one, I won't say no, but the problem is that I forgot my password,

so I can't make an edit with the colours, but I think they're still fitting this way.