Welcome to OpenDiscussion.CA Chat
 

This chat site opened May 20, 2010 and is open to everyone!

Currently this site uses PHP Free Chat as the base chat system. It is easy to use and easy to work with. There is no registration to use it, however because the chat users in the PHP Free Chat system can be completely anonymous and as with any FREE service that is open to anyone, users use it at their own risk.

>>> Enter Guest Chat Lobby <<<

Guest Chat Lobby can be a lonely place as most visitors drop in just to see how the chat looks and/or try out the features then leave. I recommend before entering this area, get one or more of your friends to visit this area at the same time you do, that way you and your friends can use and explore the features together.

[ Speaking of features; this site has the chat logs available in RSS! ]

Entering a chat site:

The main purpose of this web site is to host chat 'sites' for others that can not host chats of their own. In this web a chat site is an independent chat screen/window with its own operator and channels.

Because this web site hosts chats for other sites

(ex: http://www.nwontario.biz/TikiWiki/Chat_Thunder_Bay)

normally you would enter a chat site from their site using a link or button with the proper channel and your nick (user name) already set.

To manually enter a chat site, build a link or create a bookmark you use a URL something like this:

http://www.opendiscussion.ca/chat/site=site+name,channel+name,user+name

[ Want a chat site of your own hosted here? Contact the webmaster. ]

After the 'site=' you have three parameters separated by commas and they are as follows:

Site name -  The title of the chat site. If it exists, you can enter a chat site with only this parameter (you will be sent to the default channel and have a guest nick). If you get this parameter wrong, it will open a page where you can try a different site name.
Channel -  This allows you to jump strait into a chat channel when you enter the chat. If the channel does not exist it will create the channel. However if you been in that chat before and did not exit (/quit) the session properly, it will ignore this parameter and enter you into the previous channel.
Nick -  If you don't want to have a guest label (ex: Guest123), then you would set this parameter. However if you been in that chat before and did not exit (/quit) the session properly, it may ignore this parameter and enter you as your last known nick.

The entire URL is case sensitive and if there are spaces in any of the names use '+' in place of the space. Last but not least do not add any spaces before or after the ',' that separates the site,channel,user names.