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Frequently Asked Questions:

What servers can be used for GT-Chat?

GT-Chat Forum has the board Servers and Providers where users can exchange their expirience. In general you should know that chats always use a lot of resources and therefore not every server allows them. If you cannot find a clear statement in the Terms of Usage, you should always contact the provider and ask.

How much traffic does the chat cause?

There is no general answer to this question, it depends as well on the number of users as on the used chat mode or the count of sent posts. A chat with the maximum number of 30 users at the same time used to have 800 MB traffic per month, but it can be different for any other chat. You can control your traffic using the traffic statistics, the traffic logging has to be activated in the general settings.

Where can I find installation/update instructions?

The installation archive contains the file install.txt

If I try to open chat.pl in my browser, the message "500 Internal Server Error" appears. What's the problem?

Unfortunately this error message can mean nearly everything. Typical problems are: wrong file permissions (chat.pl have to be executable, so give chmod 755), wrong Perl path (has to be changed in the first line of the program), file was modified with a Windows editor and contains Windows-style line breaks (use a different editor or upload in ASCII mode), file extension pl is not permitted on this server (rename chat.pl to chat.cgi). If none of these is your problem, only a look to the server's error log can help, there you have the real error message then.

When logging in I get the error message: "The creation of a named pipe (execution of mknod or mkfifo) failed. Please contact the webmaster." What can I do?

GT-Chat tried to create a named pipe and failed (named pipes are necessary when using the server push mode). It could be that GT-Chat only failed to determine the correct parameters. Check "safe mode" when logging in, go to Admin / General settings, deactivate external mknod and set SYS_mknod = 14 and S_IFIFO = 4096. These parameters work with the most Unix systems. Alternatively you could ask where you have the program mknod or mkfifo on your server (only one of them needed) and change the program path.

Some of my users cannot login, do I have some option wrong?

No, problems like this are normally caused by the user's proxy server. You can test it by using client pull mode (checking "Safe mode" when logging in), then there should be no problems anymore. More detailed description can be found in the chat help.

What is the default chatmaster password?

The default account has the username admin and password admin. On some servers you could have problems logging in with this password because of the different crypting method. Then you can use the "Chatmaster password tool" from the addon area.

All users are kicked off the chat after some minutes. Is there a problem deactivating autokick with autokick=0?

The problem is not autokick (only inactive users are kicked and you always get a message when it happens) but a server timeout (for example on f2s). Server push needs an active process all the time, but it is terminated after some minutes. It is advisable to allow only client pull mode (activate "Allow only safe mode" in Admin / General settings).

Should I recommend my users to use only safe mode?

You should not as long as you have an alternative. The disadvantages of this mode are longer delays and higher traffic.

How can I make some other user a superuser or an administrator?

You have to login as chatmaster and modify the user's profile (for example click on the name and then on "Modify profile"). Then you can change the user's position.

Can I make more than one chatmaster?

The security concept doesn't allow more than one chatmaster. But you can give other user groups greater permissions at Admin / Edit permissions. Normally, the group membership is saved in the memberfile of the user in the 3th line. If you change this value to 10, you get another chatmaster.

How can I add new smileys or change the existing ones?

These functions can be found at Admin / Modify smileys. You can even make some smileys "invisible" so they are not shown in the smiley list but still can be used.

The smiley animation in my chat doesn't work / the animation stops after I've written something. What can I do?

Nothing but install a different browser. Netscape and Internet Explorer 5.0 handle animation this way.

Where can I change the colors of the chat?

All colors are adjusted in the file style.css.

How can I define a background image for the chat?

If you need a background image for the whole chat, you have to add the line "background-image:url(image.gif);" to the class #body in style.css. Otherwise you can use the usual HTML methods and define the background images in the templates.

How can I make the chat run in a frame?

The default templates make the chat use the whole window so the users have more place. If you want to change it you has to remove target="_top" from the FORM tag in the templates login.html and register_success.html. If you replace it by target="_blank" the chat will always start in a new window.

Where can I find the chat log?

The chat saves the posts in the file Variables/log.txt. Unfortunately it is not possible with the current chat version to view the log from the chat as an HTML page. Since GT-Chat 0.95, you get the possibility to view the logfiles comfortable in your administration menu.

Is it possible to show on any HTML page the number of the users who are online at the moment?

Yes, there are several solutions in the addon area, one of them can show the names of the users as well.

I've activated maintenance mode in my chat and now I cannot log in anymore. What can I do?

You have to set maintenance to 0 instead of 1 in the file Settings.dat, the maintenance mode is off then.

I try to remove the chat from my server but my FTP client keeps saying: "Directory not empty". Why?

The most likely reason are the .htaccess files that cannot be seen by the FTP client. Therefore the FTP client doesn't delete these files. Most FTP clients offer the possibility to send a command directly to the server (for example in Windows Commander you just have to type it on the command line). The command to delete the .htaccess file is "DELE .htaccess" (to be executed in the directory that cannot be deleted).