Site users

Next to security, Performance is arguably the least understood characteristic of web applications. One old colleague put it best when he talked about there being really only two states: satisfactory and not-satisfactory ... there is really no middle ground there, things are either fast enough or they are not. Unfortunately, it is also nearly impossible to know ahead of time exactly what "fast enough" is ... with "Google-speed" setting the bar for public web sites and CMS systems using authenticated almost exclusively, there is a serious performance problem waiting in the wings at all time. This was true for Livelink and no less true for Drupal.

In case the terminology is not clear, chatrooms are intended to be containers for chats.

If you know that you will have a series of related chats, then create a chatroom for them, and create the chats from the chatroom interface.

If a chat is one off or adhoc, then you can simply create a chat node without needing to relate it to any chatroom.

For developers, chatrooms and chats are distinct node types, and should be treated as such.

The "Manage this chat" fieldset contains an "Invite a user to this chat" widget. Use this to invite users to a chat.

An invited user will see a message on the next page they view, letting them know which chat they have been invited to by whom.

Modules can act on invites, so invites could lead to anything that can be coded in a Drupal module.

Chats can be made private, such that only users explicitly invited to a chat will be able to participate.

When a chat is created, check the "make chat private" checkbox.

Once the chat is loaded, use the "Add a user to this chat:" widget in the "Manage this chat" field set to add users.

You can also make the chat public from the "Manage this chat" area.

If the chat is not already public, there is a "Make chat public" button in the "Manage this chat" area.

Input format

Chat message will be filtered according to the input format you select for the chat node.

To integrate Smiley support, simply install the Smiley module and setup a filter with the smiley formatter in it.

Kick and ban messages

When users are kicked out or banned from chats, you can set the message displayed to them here.

Update frequency

How often the chat client polls the server for new messages. If you are worried about too many chats impacting server performance, set this to a bigger number than 1, which is the default.

Idle time

How many seconds between each message before a last message time is shown in the chat.

Maximum users

Set a non-zero value here if you wish to limit the number of users in a given chat.

Old messages

How many old messages to display when first entering a chat.

Magento / Drupal integration API allows you to bypass Magento, using only Drupal as front-end.

It synchronizes everything : products, catalogue, prices, users. It creates orders and manages the cart.

Here Magento module for Drupal : http://www.drupal.org/project/magento
And here it's documentation : http://drupal.org/node/468036

Enjoy !