AVChat Software Product Blog

It has been a while since we last updated the Video Profiles Module for Social Engine 4 .  Today we’re proud to release the 1st major update to it. As you will see this update brings significant improvements in all areas.

So, without further ado, here’s what’s new:

1. New video player

Until now we’ve used a rather old video player but in this build we’ve added a new one that looks and feels just like the video recorder itself. This new video player brings consistency to the record and view video profile experience.

2. Ability to delete a video profile

We’ve heard you guys and we’ve implemented this much requested feature. Thank you for bumping us about this obvious feature.

3. Wall updates with snapshots, comments and like buttons

Every time someone records a video profile, their wall will now be updated.

There will be a snapshot of the video and others will have the ability to comment and like the wall post.

On top of that, at the same time , every one’s news feed will be updated with info about the new video profile.

These new content items will bring a lot of attention to the video profiles and make them much more popular.

4. Ability for webmasters to control who can record, view and comment on video profiles.

The Video profiles integration kit now allows you to control what member levels can record, view and comment on video profiles. This will help you a lot if you have a website where each member lvel has access to a different set of content. This canb also help you if you don’t want visitors to view the video profiles.

5. [View Video Profile] & [Delete Video Profile] buttons appear only if there is any video profile to view or delete .

When visiting a profile page of a member that does not have a video profile the [View Video Profile] button will now show up anymore. The same is true in the case of the [Delete Video Profile] button on your prsonal profile page.

6. Other improvements:

• Close buttons on all modal windows
• Improved language consistency and explanations in the SE4 admin area

How to get it:

You can download this build from your private client or trial area. When you purchased this product (or requested a trial) you received a link to this area. If you don’t have the link anymore email us at contact@avchathq.com and we’ll send the link again to you.

How to install it:

1. New installation:

Detailed installation instructions for both the Video profile Module and HDFVR are found in the documentation area on hdfvr.com, here’s the direct link: http://hdfvr.com/documentationse4#1 .

2. Update existing installation:

If you want to update your existing Social Engine Integration Kit please contact us at contact@avchathq.com . Because of the major new features, the update process is complicated and need to be done manually by our integration expert.

Note:

• Social Engine has a caching mechanism.
• By default, it is set to 5 minutes.
• This caching applies to the  “View Video Profile” and “Delete Video Profile” from the front end menu.
• That’s why it might take up to 5 minutes for the Video Profile related menu items to show up.
• To change the maximum caching time or disable it altogether you can go to  your admin area and then in the Settings menu go to Performance & Caching and set up the desired items.

As you probably know, Joomla! 1.7 was released last week. The second day we tested our Joomla! 1.6 Integration Kit and it worked like a charm with Joomla! 1.7 .

The only problem we found was that JomSocial 2.2 and Community Builder 1.4 are not yet compatible with Joomla! 1.7.

So if you want to use AVChat 3 with Joomla! 1.7 you can use the AVChat 3 Integration Kit for Joomla! 1.6, but without the support for JomSocial and Community Builder.

We will announce here and on our forum (dedicated topic for Joomla! 1.7 Development) when news are coming on the way.

After a while,  the long awaited Who’s Chatting Widget for Social Engine 4 is here.

“Some say a picture is worth a thousand words”. Well I think this applies for the Who’s Chatting Widget too (see the screenshot below).

What’s new in the AVChat 3 Module for SE4:

• Updated to work with the new Who’s Chatting Widget
• Custom style.css file in accordance with SE4 default colors.
• Free Video Time value bug, fixed: Until now the maximum Free Video Time value accepted by SE4 was 127.
• Drop in room default value bug fixed:  SE4 automatically adds value 0 to empty permission fields. Now to disable the Drop in room permission you need to set it to -1, to avoid drop in a default room 0.

How to update:

Uninstall your current SE4 AVChat 3 Module and install it again using the updated kit.

To install the Who’s Chatting Widget please check the installation instructions.

Pricing and purchase:

If you currently own a license for AVChat 3 and the  Social Engine 3 and 4 integration kits, you will automatically have access to the new Who’s Chatting Widget and integration kit update (just download the Social Engine Integration Kits archive again from your client/trial area).

If you are planning to purchase it, the price will be the same as for all other integrations: $49 and it will come together with the Social Engine 3 and 4 Integration Kits.

Give us feedback:

We love feedback so if you want a feature that is not included yet in the component/modules, you can suggest it in the Social Engine 4 forum topic or email it to contact@avchathq.com.

One week from the official integration kit for Joomla! 1.6 release we’re pushing the first official update that includes some awesome new features and a few bug fixes.

There’s a whole new revamped Who’s Online Module, new permissions for user groups and full control over how AVChat opens (in a pop up or embedded).

New, revamped Who’s Chatting Module for Joomla! 1.6:

• Quick info about rooms and users
• Detailed user info: indicators that users have their cam and mic turned on and indicator if a user’s stream is private
• Detailed room info: We added a  rooms list in the module and next to each room you will find how many users are logged into that room. But , the coolest feature is that clicking a room takes you directly into it. Private rooms have indicators and they can be clicked only by admins or moderators.

Here’s how it looks now:

Impressive isn’t it?

New features for the AVChat Component for Joomla! 1.6 :

• Controll weather AVChat will open in a pop up or embedded in a page on your web site:
• Control over the Upgrade button in AVChat directly from the Joomla! admin area (you can specify an upgrade link)
• Control in what rooms users will be dropped directly from the Joomla! admin area (by specifying the room id)
• 2 new permissions for each User Group:
  • Allow users to browse the rooms list (if denied, users will not be able to click rooms in Who’s chatting module also)
  • Allow admins/moderators to login as hidden.

New features for the AVChat Component for Joomla! 1.5 :

• auto detect if the AVChat client files have been installed properly and show proper error (instead of a huge black empty box).

Bug fixes:

• JomSocial gender detection dropped for the moment because the gender is stored in various string formats across websites and might cause conflicts with your websites.
• Fixed online users list height (usefull for websites with a large number of logged in chat users)
• Fixed profile image paths

Pricing and purchase:

If you currently own a license for AVChat 3 and the  Joomla! 1.0 , 1.5 and 1.6 integration kits, you will automatically have access to the new Joomla! 1.6 integration kit update (just download the Joomla! archive again from your client/trial area).

If you are planning to purchase it, the price will be the same as for all other integrations: $49 and it will come together with the Joomla 1.0 and 1.5 integration kits.

Give us feedback:

We love feedback so if you want a feature that is not included yet in the component/modules, you can suggest it in the Joomla! 1.6 forum topic or email it to contact@avchathq.com.

Update packages will keep on coming .

The new Joomla! 1.6 is out since January and most of our clients asked us if AVChat 3 will be compatible with it. After a couple of months we can say it is .

Introducing the new AVChat Integration Kit for Joomla! 1.6 .

The integration kit for Joomla! 1.6 contains:

1) AVChat Video Chat Component

• Long awaited General AVChat Settings in Administrator area, like: connection string (no more file edits to insert the RTMP connection string), invite link, register page url, login page url, disconnect button link, etc…
  
• Native permissions integration with the new ACL system introduced by Joomla! 1.6
  
• Any user group can be given access to the admin area of AVChat
• Continued compatbility with JomSocial and CommunityBuilder

2) Improoved Who’s Chatting Module

3) New Who’s Online Module for the Administration area

We have a special Module for the Administration area of Joomla! 1.6 that shows in the header the number of users logged in at that time in the video chat. Here it is:

Pricing and purchase

If you currently own a license for AVChat 3 and the  Joomla! 1.0 and 1.5 integration kits, you will automatically have access to the new Joomla! 1.6 integration kit (just download the Joomla! archive again from your client/trial area).

If you are planning to purchase it, the price will be the same as for all other integrations: $49 and it will come together with the Joomla 1.0 and 1.5 integration kits.

Give us feedback

We love feedback so if you want a feature that is not included yet in the component/modules, you can suggest it in the Joomla! 1.6 forum topic or email it to contact@avchathq.com.

This is the first version of the integration kit for Joomla! 1.6 and there’s a lot of room for improovement. We’d love to hear what you think.

Since Drupal 7 has arrived few weeks ago, we are cooking a new AVChat 3 Module for it, and it will be available in April.

Here are some of the cool new features:

• Customized permissions for Admins
• No more avc_settings.php edits for the most important settings, you will be able to set them directly in the admin are (including the RTMP connection string)
• One click to chat: the two links ( one for the user interface, teh other for the admin interface) you were used to from Drupal 5 and 6 are now combined into a single link. Users with admin privileges are automatically detected and given the AVChat admin interface.

If you want a feature that is not included in the module, you can suggest it in the Drupal 7 forum topic .

If you currently own a license for AVChat 3 and the  Drupal 5 and 6 Modules, you will automatically have access to the Drupal 7 Module.

If you are planning to purchase it, the price will be the same as for all other integrations: $49 and it will come together with the Drupal 5 and 6 module.

I will leave you now with 3 pre-launch screenshosts :

We’re proud to announce our first integration kit for HDFVR: the HDFVR Video Profiler for Social Engine 4. It allows your SE4 users to record their own video profile directly on the web site!

Mihai did a great job with this integration! It’s the best integration we have so far, it looks like its been built from the ground up for SE.

The HDFVR Video Profiler for SE4  is priced at $49 (on top of the normal HDFVR price).

We’re also marking the occasion with a huge discount to HDFVR: $100 off both the HD and SD editions until the end of the month.

More info and several screenshots are available on hdfvr.com.

Go to http://hdfvr.com/buy-now to buy it now for your SE4 web site!

The AVChat integration kit for eMeeting is ready to be added to your eMeeting website now. The integration kit takes care of the integration (obviously! ) between your eMeeting users and user levels and AVChat.

How will it help your eMeeting website?
Well,  it will drive members engagement and loyalty and it can drive up revenue by showing ads around the video chat or charging for access to it.

Some of the integration features:

• Automatic username, gender and profile picture integration: users will have the same username, gender and profile picture in the web site and in the video chat.
• Different features for different user groups: you can control what features are enabled for each user level
  
• User profiles integration: you can access the profile of other users directly from the video chat

The AVChat Video Chat Integration Kit works with eMeeting 9. AVChat is developed in Flash thus works on Windows, Mac Os and Linux and even on Android phones!

Pricing

AVChat starts at $95/domain.

The AVChat Video Chat Integration Kit (which handles the integration between AVChat and eMeeting) costs $49 more.

You get 1 year of free access to updates and personalized support by email!

Go to the BUY NOW page to purchase AVChat and the eMeeting integration kit. For more info visit the dedicated AVChat eMeeting Integration Kit web page.

Since the new Social Engine version 4 is available and stable, we prepared the integration kit for it.

New Features:

• AVChat 3 settings available directly in the administration area
• RTMP connectionstring now can be entered in the administration area (no avc_settings.php edit needed)
• Admins and users with admin/moderator access to the chat are automatically served the AVChat admin interface instead of the user interface from where they can kick and ban people.
• You can setup the chat to open in pop up window.

Features present in the SE3 plugin too:

• Username/gender integration: users will have the same username and gender in the web site and in the video chat.
• Different features for different user levels, you can control the video chat features independently for each user level.
• Kick and ban people, admins have access to the admin area of AVChat 3 from where you can kick and ban people.
• Profile picture integration: the profile pictures are automatically used inside the video chat.
• Access profiles directly from the video chat: you can access the profiles of users directly from the video chat.
• Easy to access: A link to the video chat is automatically inserted in the main menu.
• Simple install, It installs as any other SocialEngine plugin.

The price for the video chat plugin for Social Engine 4 is $49 (includes the video chat module for Social Engine 3 too) and it’s available when you buy AVChat 3.

To buy the AVChat 3 Video Chat Plugin for your Social Engine 4 website go to the plugin page and select a AVChat 3 license + the Social Engine Plugin.

Clients who already own a Social Engine plugin license can download it at any time from the download page provided after the purchase.

There are two ways to open the AVChat Video Chat Component in a pop up in Joomla!:

1. Using Joomla!’s default method:
   • Log in the administrator area of Joomla!.
   • In the Menus area edit the link to AVChat 3.
   • Set the On Click, Open in option to  New Window without Browser Navigation (screenshot below)
   • Click Save.

   

   That’s it! Clicking the link in the menu will now open the video chat in a pop up. Using this method however you will not have control over the pop up dimensions

2. A way that allows you to control the size of the pop up:
   • For this you’ll need to login to your website with an FTP client (FileZilla is our favourite) and go to /components/com_avchat3/
   • Open avchat3.php for editing.
   • Replace the object & embed html tags (everything from <object… to </object>) with this html code:
     <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="window.open('/components/com_avchat3/index.swf', 'AVChat', 'menubar=0, resizable =0, width=900, height=650');">Launch AVChat Video Chat</a>

   • Save the file and make sure you upload it back to the web server.

   You can change the size of the pop up by editing the width and height properties in the code above.