Mibbit blog

There’s a new way to support Mibbit, and you don’t have to actually do anything!

The server is currently down for some upgrades. Should be up in a few minutes

Connections to GalaxyNET should work a lot better now, we have limits in place. If you want to connect to galaxyNET please use the “GalaxyNET” in the server dropdown list. If you’re filling in auto-connects etc, use irc.galaxynet.us to ensure getting connected

Sorry for the restarts this week This is as a result of rapid growth. Hopefuly things will be better now.

That’s right, recent chat is back. If you like getting some recent chat when you go into channels, it’s back.

It is disabled by default, and it is up to a channel admin to enable it if they wish to. You can enable it if you are op, admin, or owner – same permissions as /removechat.

To check the current state, type /recentchat in the channel.
To enable recent chat, /recentchat on
To disable, /recentchat off

These changes are saved on the backend, so you only need to set it once (unless you change your mind that is).

Another change was the removal of /ban/voice/unop etc etc from the backend, and addition of them as aliases on the frontend. If you have already changed your aliases you won’t see them though, and will need to add them if you want to use them.

There were some big changes on the backend which should result in less memory usage, and so less ‘hickups’ when Mibbit gets very busy, as it has recently.

You might have noticed a couple of small hickups yesterday. The backend server is doing well handling the growth of mibbit, but could be doing better. Especially in terms of memory usage.
Some big optimization in this area has been identified, so there should be a new update in the next few days. I’ll probably throw in a bit more irc protocol support at the same time

Also some work has been going into http://www.mibbit.com/networks/
This is a work in progress, and new stats/features will be added, along with more networks of course.

Have a good weekend

Mibbit has been growing well, we now have over 3,000 users at the peak of the day, with the backend server processing up to 400 lines of chat per second.

Progress is being made on the premium accounts, both for widgets, and for individual accounts, and I’m hopeful these should be available very soon. For the premium widget, the “Chat by Mibbit” is removed, and instead of adverts, your users see a lovely Topic above the chat

In the mean time though, if you’re enjoying using Mibbit and see it as useful to you, please consider sending over a donation to help pay the running costs.

Advertising is ramping up, but these things take time to get right.

On the feature front, there will probably be some work on fixing a few outstanding bugs, and expanding on the scripting features – adding remotes, prompts etc.

I know there are a heap of things on the wishlist, and a lot of things Mibbit needs to do but currently doesn’t… The main thing is to keep progressing and improving, and hopefuly that’s been the case so far.

Also if you’d like to follow some behind the scenes mini updates, you can follow progress at http://twitter.com/mibbit

The first issue that has been fixed is /query. This now works as it should. If you do /query nick, it’ll open up a new tab to that nick. You can also do “/query nick (message)” and it’ll also send the message, and show it on the new tab.
There have been a few tidyups with the userlist, and a new system for setting up custom menu items!

Just go into your [prefs], and go to [menus]. You will see the defaults there, which you can modify if you like, or add to.

The commands work exactly the same as for aliases (See wiki for guide). Additionaly you can use $nick to signify the nickname that was clicked.

A double click on the nick will trigger the 1st usermenu command, which is by default PM, but you can change that as you wish.

This opens up some cool possibilities…
Say you’d like a new menu item that searches google for that nickname, you can use /showurl in the command to do that. Or if you’re using a widget, you could integrate right into your own scripts etc… for example add a menu item that shows all forum posts from that user in the extraContent area.

The command parsing will be added to and improved, and those changes will come to aliases, and now custom menus as well.

Also, when you open the usermenu, it’ll now scroll if needed to fit it into view. There’s also a new setting for a hover over each menu item.

When you view someones pastebin, you’ll also get nice syntax highlighting Auto detects the language…

There seem to be some extreme network issues at the data center, so Mibbit may currently be down for you. Rest assured it will be fixed asap.

Thanks

edit: The issue seems to have been located. All should be well.

You can now setup sound alerts in Mibbit. At the moment only in the main client, but they will be in the widget in the next day or 2.

Sounds are disabled by default, but if you’d like them, just go into prefs and click on [sounds].
You can even use your own mp3 files, just put in the URL. I’ll upload some good standard alert sounds in due course so there will be more of a selection to choose from.

At the moment there are only 3 alert types,

* Someone sent you a new PM which opened a new window
* A server disconnected
* Someone mentioned your nickname

Those seem like the main ones needed right now, so hopefuly this makes mibbit easier to use in tabbed browsers etc where you may not necessarily notice when things happen

Have a good weekend!

Also quite a few server limits have been raised, such as undernet, and other requests for raises sent out. So hopefully you should have better success connecting to some servers.