Thanks to Keith for pushing on this one...

I'm going to add an offical, band-sponsered CHAT ROOM to the Orchard shortly. I've got the preliminary behind-the-scenes work finished and am just waiting for a few payment details before I deploy the chat room. Once it is deployed, it will appear in the top menu bar on each-and-every page of the site (up there near the Calendar & Members links). Just click and it should work for you.

Once it is deployed, we'll be modifying it to make it prettier, more secure, and more integrated with our security setup on the Orchard, so it may change appearance, be unavailable, and be unreliable for the first few days it's out there. Please be patient.

Thank you to Karin & Linford for authorizing and paying for this enhancement to the Orchard. They remain true supporters of the community we're building.

As always, I want to know your thoughts. Please reply here or PM me.

Rock on, Drewster!!!

Curious: Will you need to be a registered member to use it?

The intention is that the chat room will be for registered users only.

Cool beans!! Many thanks, Drew (and to Karin and Linford too).

will it be Mac friendly?

And Thank you Drew for offering to take the reigns and moderating your sassy little ass off in this Orchard.

For all of you:

ditto that.

and many thanks to keith for providing us an "unofficial" place to chat and hang out for all the years prior.

thanks you big hunk of a man.
and thanks to k and l.
and of course, thanks to keith for providing the chat in the past.

we should have a chat kick-off (cyber) party. byob.

Not if I can help it!

Just kidding.

Yes, it should be Mac friendly as long as you're running a modern browser. Check http://www.parachat.com for compatibility information.

that is truly kickass!

Thanks all around to drew and karin and linford!

and as the others said thanks Keith for hosting our orchard chats!

Awesome! Thanks all around to Drew, K&L, and the Legendary KeithB!

And Kylie...what is BYOB for chat? Bring your own BRB?

Cool. If its anything like the chat I use on other forums (which also use IP.board or similar forum templates), it should be pretty darned good.

ORCHARD CHAT is live!

Thank you to Keith for the suggestion, and to Karin & Linford for supporting this project.

Locate the "Live Chat" link up in the top right of each-and-every page of the site. Click it and you'll be taken to the Orchard Chat room. Please be patient as it takes a moment to start. You'll need a modern browser with Java support to use the room. Once the chat room is ready to use, you'll see the following welcome message: "Welcome to OrchardChat -- the official chat room of Over The Rhine!".

The room is open to registered Orchard users only, and you can see a list of anyone in chat at the bottom of the front page of the forums. If no one is in chat, nothing is displayed down there.

The chat room is currently very plain. We'll jazz it up with some colors and maybe a background image in the near future, once it's been tested for security and performance. I am interested in hearing your thoughts about the chat room.

The chat room is currently UNMODERATED. Please be respectful and considerate of other people when using the chat room. If any problems are reported, we'll take steps to make sure that all parts of the Orchard are pleasant to use.

Enjoy OrchardChat!

i say we break this puppy in tonight. how's 9ish (EST) sound?

be there or be square.

thanks again to the drew ™ and K&L.

HAH!

It logs your a$$ in automatically with your Orchard name!

HAH!

Über-groovy.

I'll try to be there! We'll see if paige will join us or just drag me away


I'll add my thanks to Drew and K&L for pushing this, and to Keith for helping us with our fix on his site.

Muahahaha!!!

And then, if you're on 'online list' viewer like me... it'll show people as active in online chat!!

How rad is this shiznit!?!

Keith, K&L, Drew... MAHALO!

Sounds good to me. I"m bringing Spaaten Optimator myself. I don't want to drink any of that lite stuff that Kylie will bring.

I appreciate the acknowledgment, but I really have to thank Gillian, the admin/moderator on PattyNet.net (also a member here and an OtR fan, although she rarely posts) for the idea of an integrated chat room with an indicator of current chat activity on the forum. She set up something similar a few months ago on PattyNet and it increased chat participation there dramatically. Hopefully we'll see the same here!

Can someone explain to me how to view the chat list? I don't see it.

See y'all a little later!

in the board statistics at the bottom of the home page, under the active user list and above the birthdays, a bar saying who's is chat will be there if anyone's in the room. no one in the room, no bar, all good.

uh...duh.
I don't see a bar or any names and I only saw the java symbol doin' its thing. Then it disappeared. No welcome note or anything. I have a firewall but I only know how to make it accept applications...not ports. What is a port?
Not that I ever go to chat anyway, but I just wanna check it out!

*dances*

party party party!

jim, you can't handle this lite stuff.

What's the java symbol? I think a port is any spot on the computer where you can plug things into. A monitor has to be plugged into a port, I know that much.

Is there anyone chatting now?

OK, I see the bar where people are in the room (1), but I can't get there. I have disabled my firewall and still no.

Ok folks--we they have built us a chat room--now--will they come????

we see you pop in and right back out. clinton keeps gettin booted too.

all i get is a blank screen

what a great kick-off for the new chat room!!

hopefully the kinks get worked out for those of you who couldn't stay in the room(or maybe you just need to be put on the list).

that was awesome!

Thanks to K & L and Drew for setting this all up. It was great. I think it will be a fabulous addition to our little commune.

I agree with christina this is so sweeeeeeeet for the band to help with this little addition to the forum!

That was fun. And it worked well for me. I'll have to try to get to chat more often.

it was fun, and nice to *see* some new faces in there and some old returnees. but if there is many more nights like that, i'm going to have to take a speed reading course.

i would say it was a very nice opening night party.

too bad trudes and rachel has probs getting in, next time slip the bouncer at the door a $20...

Important Announcement: I think everyone knows that ORCHARD CHAT is live now, Drew!