Community Chatroom?

[cPT.cAPSLOCK]

Does this forum support a shoutbox? I know they require a lot of bandwidth and processing power depending on the amount of usage.

Yea, there's a plethora of shoutbox plugins available for vBulletin.
The downside is that most shoutboxes don't refresh automatically (except the AJAX based ones), so we might not be able to find a good one. It'll be worth looking into though, as it can be a viable alternative.

I'm almost sure there will be a way to incorporate an IRC into html based web script/forum.

The question is, would we want to?
Increased bandwidth usage, definite need for policing/monitoring, and a ton of work to design an implement these changes.

If you allow an off site representation of the community of We're Alive we wouldn't need constant monitoring or any serious web implementation to take place.
Not to mention if the extra traffic might cause problems somehow.

However, it would be really really cool to see the We're Alive WebBased IRC chat (The WarRoom!) on the main page right next to the episode/discuss tabs...
Then again.
Thats for the higher ups to decide.

The War Room sounds nice!

Some chat plugins have the ability to report users, so that it can be monitored indirectly. Design work won't be a big deal, as that's included in the plugin's package. The chat will probably end up on a separate page, or if it's a shoutbox right above the forum.
Only if we manually build it in, it'll be a lot of work, but I believe that also causes Kc to lose the official support from the vB team that's included in the license. So I don't think that'll happen anyway.
Don't quote me on the license thing by the way, as I'm not entirely sure about that. It's just what I recall from another place