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RookChat

RookChat is an open-source HTTP/CGI-based chat room that webmasters may download and install on their web sites. It features dynamic multi-room capabilities, public/private/moderated rooms, multi-lingual support by user, many administrative levels, memos, memo lists (similar to mailing lists), graphical smileys, bot games, and over 75 commands for chatting and administration. RookChat requires a UNIX or Windows NT/2000/XP with Python 2.1 or greater.

Basic Features

  • Dynamic multiple rooms. Users can create rooms as they desire.
  • Room types. Rooms can be public or private, with free or moderated discussion.
  • Administrative permissions. Four administrative levels -- moderator, operator, administrator, and owner -- allow you to have fine-tuned control over what permissions different users have, and where. Users can manage their own rooms by default, but you can explicitly grant individual users privileges over main rooms and/or system-wide.
  • Administrative powers. There are a host of functions to take care of unruly users: kick them, quiet them, evict them, ban them, possess them, shrink them, or turn them into morons.
  • Private messages and memos. Send private messages to user(s), or send memos to off-line users for when they log in next.
  • Memo lists. Create your own "memo lists" (mailing lists, except through memos instead of email) for subscribing users.
  • Transcripts. Users can record and download transcripts of conversation automatically.
  • Multi-lingual support. Individual users can adjust what language instructions, error messages, etc, will appear in. Supported languages: American English, British English, Finnish, Norwegian, German, Japanese, and Latin, as well as the joke translations "Hick" and "Pirate."
  • Automated password recovery. Users can get forgotten usernames and/or passwords emailed to them.
  • Dice roller. Users have a dice roller available to them in the chat room, which will roll any number of any-sided dice on command.
  • Unit converter. Users can convert between Fahrenheit and Celsius, miles and kilometers, and more. This is useful for multinational chat communities.
  • Bots. Users can summon bots to host games and other activities.

User Features

Install Features

  • Customize the name of the chat program. If you wish, you can effectively replace the name RookChat with your own name. Optionally replace the title images with your own images.
  • Set up and name rooms. While individual chatters can create "user rooms" as they desire (which disappear when everybody leaves), you can set up "main rooms," which are persistent rooms moderated by the chat administration (that's you, plus whoever you choose to grant administrative privileges to). These main rooms have their own names that you can assign.
  • Use your own advertising banners. If you sell advertising space on your web site, you can set up the chat room to display your own advertising banners on each page. You can also customize how often the advertising banners refresh themselves.
  • Logging. Set up the chat room to log chat conversations to files.
  • Bad word moderation. Optionally prohibit bad words by replacing profanity with more politic alternatives. There is a default list of bad words and their replacements, but you can customize this list.
  • Colors. Customize all the colors that are used by RookChat to create your own look-and-feel.

Development Features

  • Add new commands. - The code is organized so that developers can add their own commands with a minimum of hassle.
  • Add new bots. - A toolkit is provided to make programming new bots as easy as possible.