So as part of my chat rooms I decided to create some local chat rooms with some nice simple software.

I came across Buzzerchat, which on the face of things seemed like a good idea, it was pretty expensive for what is is really at $255 but seems very flexible.

The software itself is java based and is very alike msn chat rooms used to look in the 90s, so its a format people are familiar with.  Its good software you can also use with your mobile phone, which is great.

So things start off ok, I have a few bugs and they are quickly resolved, with no problems what so ever with good support.

So the software is ok and support is ok, whats the problem?

FRUSTRATIONS

After a recent upgrade a lot of my features stop working, and have not been working for over 2 weeks now, including the private message features.

The frustrations start when you start to raise issues about their software on their website, there are several fundamental problems with this software which I will talk about later, I pointed these out on the website forums, some people agreed, I go back to check my post to see any feedback and find my post has been removed, for breaking forum guidelines !!

Huh so pointing out issues breaks forum guidelines?

Clearly not, clearly they just do not want people to point our problems with their software, HELLO solve the issues and you wont have any bad feedback.

There was also a post on there by someone who claimed he had left a post on hot scripts about Buzzerchat.com and was told that if he didn’t remove this, he would have his contract with Buzzerchat.com cancelled.

This to me is very worrying, I would not deal with anyone who treats their customers with such disdain, and if you think you can stop bad feedback getting out there by simply removing posts on the forums, Buzzerchat.com are sadly mistaken.

So I thought I would raise my issues with Buzzerchat.com as my site still has quite a few bugs, and ask why my Forum post had been removed.

I was told this was a moderator error and this would not happen again, the sales staff apologised.  I am still not sure Buzzerchat.com understand what bad feedback can do to such a service.

I have worked closely with Vbulletin and Php Fox in the past, and they have always thanked me for my feedback no matter how harsh, because that’s what software like this needs to make it successful, it needs people to test it to destruction, so they can make it better.

PROS

- Nice layout, a number of different skins
- Good admin section

CONS

- Support that cant take criticism or deal with any kind of customer service issue.
-  Support that think they are correct in their views, and unwilling to move their position.
-  Too many bugs
-  No word filters on registered names
-  No way to moderate the pictures posted on the sites.
-  No way to moderate the blog posts
-  Software open to attack from spammers.

SUCCESSFUL SOFTWARE

I would like to see Buzzerchat.com listen to their customers, and stop dodging the issues or you are not going to have any more customers left!

Ste

I heard on the grapevine that Tagged.com had closed their chat rooms recently, made me wonder why, then I found this !

A pretty shocking story, and very poor service from Tagged.com, while im sure its hard to moderate and control their content on their site, there is little excuse for letting content like that onto your site!

Tagged have also been in trouble before for sending out those spammy email requests, on which you get an email from someone claiming to know you and asking you to sign up to tagged.com.

On signing up tagged them accesses your contacts list on msn or yahoo messenger depending on the email address you use to sign up with, and then distributes a similar invitation to them.

More information in this video

I have always hated those kind of mails, and I get countless spam emails like this every day.

Well it seems like its caught up with them !

Somthing major seems to have happened with Php fox in the last few days, as people are reporting their sites being inundated by lots of blog spam, lots of new people registering with various ip addresses.

Thought I would do a post on how best to try to stop this spam from China.

Of course you could just disable your site for now, but for me thats not an option.  So heres what ive tryed up to now, I seem to have stopped most of it.

1) Akismet – You need to enable your akismet, this will pick up most of the blog spam.

- Goto akismet.com
- Scroll down the screen a bit and click where it says, we have free api keys for your personal blog.
- Put in your email address and it should give you some details, leave this screen open or copy and paste them somewhere.
-  Go into your Phpfox admin and go to the spam section, the akismet settings are at the top of this page.
-  It will ask you for your Akismet URL:
- Type in this field w w w.yoursite.com (obviously without the spaces in the www)
-  Goto the next field down and it will ask for your Akismet Password
-  Now go back to your akismet settings you just registered at their site, and you need to put the akismet api key you were given, into this 2nd field.
-  Its 12 characters and alphanumeric!
-  Now any spam that it picks up will show in admin under dashboard, just click the number and it will show the posts, then just delete them.
-  However the odd post still gets through.

You might also want to ban the users, and then ban their ip ranges, you can always remove these at a later date. I have been doing the following:

-  In the dashboard, put in the username of the spammer and click go
-  Scroll down to their name and click the first tab and ban the user.
-  Write down the Ip address.
-  Goto tools, ban filters and ip address from them menus at the top of php fox
-  Type the first 2 bits of the ip address in with a fulls stop after the 2nd number and then add a asterisk which will ban that range, for example 221.12.*
-  Click add.

Its a complete pain but it does seem to be slowly working.

Ive tried enabling recapture and it didn’t make any difference, along with making people confirm their registration.

Please pass on this information and post to others, hopefull we can all beat this.

Steveo

Hi there

It seems the mighty Facebook had some problems in the last month or so with their chat appication, it seems and I quote from Facebook.

“For a limited period of time, a bug permitted some users’ chat messages and pending friend requests to be made visible to their friends by manipulating the ‘preview my profile’ feature of Facebook privacy settings,” a company spokeswoman said.

Pretty poor form, be interesting to know if you could sue them if anything important got out there lol, either way I dont know how many use the little chat app on facebook anyhow.

Lets hope they sort it soon and if anyone had this problem please let me know, I would like to know what exactly happened.

Stevo

Looks like some famous people have been rumored to be using chat roulette too lol, there are a lot of fakes images out there though.

Paris hilton is rumored to be on there, some woman called Ashley Tisdale (whos she)

And then bird who went out with Johnny Depp, Kate moss.

If you spot anyone famous let us all know, im sure It would be interesting news.

Anyhow seems to be lots of people posting stuff about Chat Roulette now it seems to have become a bit of an online phenomena

I have found a few good you tube clips too so thought I would add a few.

It does seem like the people who use Chat Roulette that keep their pants on do seem to have a good sense of humour.  Which is something sadly lacking from the chatting fraternity in the past

Anyhow Im just waffling now as im tired lol

Steveo

I thought I would write some stuff about chat roulette as it seems to be sweeping the chat world at the moment, and I for 1 have no idea what all the fuss is about lol.

Where did it all start ?

In fact quite a long time ago, Ive seen many similar sites to chat roulette in the past, they all failed miserably, for one reason not many people had web cams at that point in time, but that’s changed now, most people have web cams pre installed on their computer or laptop.

The problem with starting a site like this is you need lots of people to log on, and keep the community active, now chat roulette is popular I dont see it ever having this problem now.

How Chat Roulette works ?

Well basically you go to the chat roulette website, enable your cam, let the site access your website and then click new game, as soon as you do that you are randomly connected to another user, this could be anyone from someone playing with themselves or someone sleeping, if you don’t like the look of them you can click next at any time and move onto another person.

Getting Next-ed

One of my major gripes with chat roulette is you get next-ed a lot, and I mean a lot, the chat roulette lot are a pretty shallow bunch to be honest, which is one of the major downsides to the website, so you might spend an hour on the site, just bouncing from one person to another without even one conversation.

Its Pretty Clever

In fact the setup is pretty clever, as the site is a very simple script and doesn’t use much bandwidth at all.  So you have no worries about needing a big server with loads of bandwidth to run the site.

No doubt there will be 100s of clones now all variants on this theme, so it should evolve and change over time

Security Issues

The security issues are tackled pretty simply, there isn’t any at all, a simple message saying you must be over 16 to use the site and that’s your lot, so the site is not safe at all but since when has that put anyone off using chat sites and communities.

No doubt every liberal in the land will be asking for a panic button at the drop of a hat once they realise how easy chat roulette is to get into.

Here is a decent video I managed to find about Chat Roulette, pretty good stuff

Signing off

Steveo

Poke me !

The bane of a community builders life, Face-book has finally been asked to do something about their frankly lazy look towards security.

Details are sketchy but they really wouldnt be able to secure this site with a crack team of experts they have that many users !

It sounds like they have refused to install a panic button, which I think is common sense (people who ask for panic buttons are really not thinking about the issues with common sense) but it does sound like they are going to make it easier to report people, which is a bit of a cop out.

The main problem with Face-book is you are forced to use your full name when registering, this is a complete no no online.

So what do facebook do, make you register with your full name and also stick every other bit of personal information on your page as well, just in case they didnt know what you looked like or where to find you ?

The communities Ive been running for years have always told people to not use your full name online, its a recipe for disaster, with stalkers and nutters basically being able to find people, with a few simple questions and a phone book or the online phone book, I guarentte I could find where you lived if I wanted to within minites, this frankly doesnt bother some people, but this is human nature, thinking something bad wont happen to them, well it just might!

However I do have better things to do than scare people by finding where they live, I merely want people to take their privacy seriously and realise the dangers that are out there.  People should value their privacy but it seems in a sociaty taken over by celebrity culture and getting your name in the papers people had sadly forgotten the value of this.

If you fill out your facebook profile and put where you live and post your pics, then you have to realise there is a chance someone you might not want to find you, can find you, thats a FACT!

In fact I have no idea how they have managed to get away with it for so long, I registered with Facebook with a false name and was told to change it or I would be removed, I changed it to another false name, and havent had any problems since lol!

I dread to think what actually goes on behind the scenes at Facebook, they must be banning people daily, although you never hear of anyone actually being banned or chucked out.  I had a communty not even 1% as bit as face-book and I was banning nigerian scammers, older sleezy men and perverts from dawn till dusk, why blokes choose to post pictures of their bits ill never know but this seemed to be a particular hobby for some of my users.

I have had many communities over the years and the stuff that actually does go on behind the scenes is shocking because Ive seen it first hand, I would never let anyone under the age of 18 on any of my communities for the simple fact its not safe, parents simply do not realise what is happening on these sites.

People who have no clue about online security have been saying get a panic button on Facebook ? Whatever for ? what bloody good is that gonna do ?

So you press the button and then what exactly ? it contacts the police does it ? like hell it does, you want to try informing the police of any online problems, they are not even interested I rang them when I had idiots passing underage pictures on my site, they were not interested in the slightest.

Do you remember the Bebo panic button ? well I challenge you to be able to find it, because I’ve never seen it, I can only think you might need to register as an underage user, who know its like the yeti, I’ve heard about it and see a few dodgy grainy pictures but no ones ever seen it!

Another thing that really annoys me about Face-book, why do companies set up their own face-book pages ? and send all their traffic to face-book, I was listening to talk sport and Ian Collins the other night banging on about join his face-book page, don’t get me wrong I like Ian Collins hes a fantastic broadcaster, and the twitter doesn’t bother me as much as they are not monetising their site with advertising like face-book.

On what other buisness would you send your customers to another company ? None, Never ever so why do this with facebook, it makes zero sense at all to me.

Do those people realise how Face-book utilise this traffic and sell it on to advertisers, it costs something like 55p a click to advertise on Face-book, which is shocking, so Ill do a very conservative estimate that they get 50,000 clicks per day on their ads work it out 55px50000 its a lot of money, from people sending their customers to Face-book, completely bonkers if you ask me.

Face-book would argue you get access to all our features and their security, I would argue you could create your own site for very similar to Face-book on your own homepage, keep your advertising revenue and secure it yourself.

For a couple of grand, which would pay for itself in no time.

Don’t get me wrong, Face-book is an excellent site but it has more or less bulldozed every other community out of the way, this is never good for the online community.

In fact I might even forward this post to Ian Collins via his face-book which is the beauty of face-book.

Ive bored myself with my own moaning now so I will leave it there, if you dont agree with anything then go ahead leave a comment, be contructive or I will just delete it lol !

Steveo

So I decided to dump the top sites layout as its was complete garbage, and I was sick of being spammed daily by Turkish chat rooms, and tired of trying to get people to put my link back up.

Therefore it is no more and I will concentrate on doing a blog instead to let off some steam and discuss some of the issues about chat rooms, of which there are many.

Mostly down to the fact they have been completely ruined by clever but ruthless webmasters, who don’t give a monkeys about their users.

However users and webmasters alike have to take the blame for the state of chat rooms, as users just levitate towards the chat rooms with the most people in, so they can hit upon as many people as possible lol!

Webmasters of course know this and use the pack as many users in as they can rule, and dont ban any of the garbage.  Of which I do on our chat rooms, which does actually work and keep a better quality of chatter, but it makes it very difficult to compete with the big chat rooms out there.

Anyhow I’m fed up of my own typing at the moment, so will leave it there, to all those that lost your link on this site, very sorry but the spammers and link removers forced my hand.

No more link exchanging for me, im now a kick ass blogger lol!

Stevo