The "chatter box" is a small pane that you can display which allows users to quickly and easily chat with one another. It is a much less formal environment that can still be used alongside chat rooms.
Displaying the chatter box
To display the chatter box, use the following code in either the primary or secondary navigation panes:
THEIA CODE[CHATTERBOX]
For more information on Theia code, look here.
Configuring the refresh time
If you want to change how often the chatter box is displayed, then you will need to use the "control AJAX refreshes" (admin tool 068). Look for the field reading chatter box and change the value to the number (in seconds) you would like the chatter box to refresh. If set to 0 then the chatter box will not automatically refresh.
Configuring the number of messages
If you want to change how many messages you want displayed in the chatter box, go to "tools" and locate "control per-page counts" (admin tool 069) in "system configuration". The two fields you want to adjust here are chatter box messages and chatter box messages (complete / large).
Configuring some other settings
As well as the tool described above, which allows you to customize the refresh rate, there are some other chatter box options you can configure through "chatter box settings" (admin tool 214).
The first two fields, append stealth members with a unique ID and append guests with a unique ID, are used to bring about some distinction between different guests and stealth members. For example, if guest chatting is permitted and there are 10 guests on, each guest would have the same name: guest. The same is true of stealth members (if you use stealth mode). This can make the flow of conversation very difficult, so this is where these two options come into play. When set to yes, "guest" or "private member" is then appended with a unique 3 digit ID; thus looking like "guest 205" or "private member 420". These IDs are based merely on information about the user (such as their login name, if any, and their IP address); plus the IDs change each day, so just because someone sees "stealth member 420" one day, doesn't mean they will always carry that ID, so their identity is still protected.
The two flood detection settings are used when you want to do just that; prevent flooding. In other words, when a user writes a message, and then writes another really quickly (say in under a second), the flood control would prevent the second message from posting. The idea is to prevent spamming or trolling, but is also useful because it can prevent accidentally resubmitting the form. The reason there are two of these fields is so that you can allow members to chat more often than guests. Assuming you allow guests to chat in the chatter box, this means that you could enforce flood control at 10 seconds for guests and 2 seconds for members.
