Important Information about ZBit ASP.NET Chat Pro.

Installation

You should follow installation instructions step by step. This is a professional version of product targeted at experienced web-masters, and as such, assumes that installation will be performed by competent individuals. If you don not follow the setup procedure there is a very good chance that the product would not work properly, at least initially or that you would spend more time debugging it than reading this short document.

 

Look and feel, Colors and Smileys

 

Chat Server API Documentation

 

Translation to other languages

ZBit Net Chat is designed so that it can be easily translated to other spoken languages. By default the package comes with English language (turned on by default), Spanish, French, Hebrew and  Russian languages which can be switched to by modifying one entry on web.config file (see configuration section below). If you would like to translate the chat to another language, please create a new resource DLL, copy the string table from the main chat DLL file (chat_net3.dll) located in bin directory, translate it to your language and save it under a sub-directory under the bin directory that corresponds to that new language. After you change the globalization entry in web.config, your chat should work in the new language.

 

Configuration

As stated already in the installation instructions, which, we are sure, have been read by now, most of configurable parameters for the chat are stored in the database. However, some of the things can not be stored in the database (i.e. the database connection string itself). These settings are part of web.config file found in root of ZBit ASP.NET Chat Pro installation directory. One of the most important setting of all, is the logging directory (configuration/appSettings/add key="zbc.Log.Directory"). It is so important because chat server is not a desktop application, and as such, can not provide user feedback in UI. It is rather a service application and can only interact with a user via log files when something is miss-configured or just doesn't work. So, it is very important that this entry is pointing to an existing physical directory on the server with a proper (read/write/browse) access rights for the windows account that is running the .NET chat. The windows account that is running ASP.NET application could be ASPNET account or some other account with a similar purpose. Please check the IIS configuration and read IIS help for more information. See installation instructions for more information.
Another important parameter in web.config file is the Database connection string (zbc.ConnectionString). Please make sure it points to the proper Data Source  entry for chat database as described in the installation instructions.

If you would like to switch a language of the chat UI you would have to find the globalization entry in the web.config file (configuration/system.web/globalization). You have to change the uiCulture attribute of this node to the language of your choice (i.e. "en" for English, "ru" for Russian, "fr" for French, "de" for German, "it" for Italian, "ja" for Japanese, "es" for Spanish  and so on). You have to make sure that the language resource is available already for that language as described in translation to other languages section above.
Other settings in web.config are self-explanatory.
Once the chat is up and running please log-in to as the administrator to tweak other settings as described in installation instructions.
 

Un-installation

Known Issues

  1. Because of the limitation of IIS that runs on the windows workstations (Windows 2000 Pro or Windows XP Pro), ZBit ASP.NET Chat Pro can only run on Microsoft Windows Servers. The product has been successfully tested on Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2003 Server. IIS that runs on non-server version of windows limits number of simultaneous connections and although one or two chatting users might be able to log-in, subsequent connections will be refused and client browser will show an error  "HTTP 403.9 - Access Forbidden: Too many users are connected". Windows servers do not have such limitation, so , chat server can accept unlimited number of users.
     

  2. Default installation of Windows 2003 Server configures IIS worker process to recycle every so often (by default every 26 hours). Because chat keeps all it's data-structures in memory, restarting working process is equivalent of restating the chat server application. To prevent this behavior please un-check corresponding option in the configuration of the application pool that runs the chat server. Otherwise the chat will be restarted on regular intervals and all the users will get kicked out at these times.