Q: What do the commands on the bottom of the page do?
Show pictures: click this and any posted pictures will be in view. Uncheck it to have a text only screen.
Show times: simply shows the time the person sent the message.
Update: Manually refreshes the page, hit this button to see if anyone said anything.
Q: How do I lockout (ignore) someone?
a. Click the X next to a persons name to ignore their messages.
b. An Ignored person will have a "U" next to their name in the User List. To Un-Ignore them click the U for Unlock next to their name.
c. A person who can chat with you has an L next to their name in the User List. Hit L To Lockout (Ignore) them.
Q: What can I do now to make the chat page move go faster?
A: Ask to show only the last few messages. Put in a number like 10 in the "Lines" box. This will keep the file size down.
A: Don't use "Real Time" refresh and display pictures at the same time. Each picture requires a fetch from a remote place which will slow down the transfer. I like running with two windows, one showing pictures which I do my typing in, and the other displaying "text only" in real time.
A: Move to the other chat room for a private conversation.
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Q: Sometimes the chat window redraws but nobody sent any new messages? Why?
A: This is a bug in the Commerce Builder chat program that has been reported. They send out new pages to everybody after someone sends a private message, even though only one person can actually see the change.
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Q: I am worried about security. How safe am I chatting?
A: We have modified the chat software to conceal identifying information. Unless you want to, no identifying information such as URL, IP number, domain name, etc., is made available to other users.
Nevertheless, we recommend that you do not discussing highly confidential matters on our system.
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Q: What do I do if someone says something unpleasant or offensive?
A: Pretend they do not exist. When ignored, people like this will eventually go away. Any other reaction will engage them and they will continue to be a nuisance. Your other option is to make them invisible to you by clicking the "X" next to their name...that will lock them out of your view in chat. Fortunately, such problems are rare and can be completely avoided by using Subscriber Chat, where we require chat participants to be registered TGForum subscribers.
For even more extensive help, see Dana Bourne's TGF Chat Help Pages