Support: AVChat Documentation

AVChat Video Chat Plugin PRO for WordPress 3.x

The AVChat Video Chat Plugin PRO for WordPress handles the integration between your WordPress web site and our AVChat software. Here's what it will do:

  • user name integration
  • profile url integration
  • profile image integration
  • placement of video chat within the web site (user and admin interface)
  • allows you to control different features for every user role so that your chat will be exactly yhe way you want it

If you cannot find the answer you’re looking for here, we encourage you to try our FAQ or forums. There's also more documentation regarding AVChat in the documentation area for the main standalone version.

All the specific documentation regarding WordPress is on this page so if you're looking for something specific just hit Ctrl+F on your browser.

Here are the WordPress related topics we will cover on this page:

1. Installing the AVChat Video Chat Plugin PRO for WordPress

First you have to download 2 archives from the client/trial area on avchathq.com to your computer. These 2 archives are:

  • AVChat 3.0.zip (contains media server files for Red5/FMIS/Wowza and AVChat Standalone)
  • avchat3_wordpress_plugins_pro.zip (contains 1 plugin for WordPress 3.x)

Extract the 2 archives somewhere on your computer to have all the files handy! We will use files from both archives!

1.1 Setting up the avchat30 application on the media server

First you need to install the avchat30 app on your media server. If you don't know what a media server is check out the requirements. If you already have a media server (Red5, FMIS, FMIS hosting, Wowza) here's what you need to do:

Red5 0.8
installed on a
dedicated or VPS server		 Wowza
installed on a
dedicated or VPS server

1. Upload the avchat30 folder from the AVChat 3.0.zip/Files to upload to your media server (Red5 0.8) folder to the webapps folder of your Red5 0.8 installation (C:\Program Files\Red5\webapps on Win, /opt/red5/webapps/ on Linux).

2. Linux only: Chmod the new avchat30 folder to 777.

3. Restart the Red5 server

You're done, move to Part 1.2 below

1. Upload the applications, lib and conf folders from the AVChat 3.0.zip/Files to upload to your media server (Wowza) folder to the root folder of your Wowza Media Server installation (C:\Program Files\Wowza Media Systems\Wowza Media Server Pro 1.7.2\ on Windows).

2. Restart the Wowza server

You're done, move to Part 1.2 below
FMIS
installed on a
dedicated or VPS server		 FMIS
hosting from
http://influxis.com

1. Upload the avchat30 folder from the AVChat 3.0.zip/Files to upload to your media server (FMS) folder to the applications folder of your FMIS installation (C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Flash Media Server\applications on Windows, /opt/macromedia/fms/applications/ on Linux).

2. Linux only: Chmod the new avchat30 folder to 777.

You're done, move to Part 1.2 below

While logged in your Influxis.com account:

1) Go to File Manager:
2) Click the root folder
3) Click the folder icon at the top labeed New Folder
4) Give the new folder the name avchat30 and click OK
5) click the avchat30 folder in the list to the left
6) At the top click the red arrow labeled Upload
7) In the empty list that shows up add main.ase, settings.asc and Application.xml from the AVChat 3.0.zip\Files to upload to your media server (FMS)
8) Cick Upload

Done.

Your connection string used in Part 2 will look like: rtmp://123.rtmphost.com/avchat30/_definst_ where 123.rtmphost.com is shown at the top of your Influxis.com account.

Now that we've got that out of the way, let's move on to installing AVChat Plugin PRO for WordPress and AVChat itself.

1.2 Installing the AVChat Video Chat Plugin PRO on WordPress

  1. Connect to your web site hosting account using FTP
  2. Upload the avchat-3-pro folder (from avchat3_wordpress_plugins_pro.zip) to your /wp-content/plugins folder
  3. Upload the contents of the folder named Files to upload to your web site from the AVChat 3.0.zip archive to /wp-content/plugins/avchat-3-pro/
  4. Chmod the /wp-content/plugins/avchat-3-pro/uploadedFiles folder to 777 (otherwise the upload function might not work)
  5. Create a new folder tokens (/wp-content/plugins/avchat-3-pro/tokens) and CHMOD it to 777 (otherwise we might have token generation issues later on)
  6. Activate the plugin from the admin area
  7. Enter the rtmp connectionstring in Settings -> AVChat 3 . It should look like this:
    rtmp://myFMSserver.com/avchat30/_definst_
    where myFMSserver.com is the domain name or ip of the server where your media server is installed.
  8. Create a new page with this content: [chat]
  9. Login to the video chat. The first time you will be asked for the license key ( it's in your client/trial area on avchathq.com).
  10. That's it you're logged in the AVChat video chat.

2. Accessing the AVChat admin interface in WordPress

If you have access to the AVChat admin area (see who has access), then the admin interface will be given by default when you access the chat page. You will just have to be logged in with your user and access the chat page.

3. Who has access to the video chat admin interface

By default , the superadmin always has access to AVChat admin interface. If you want other user roles to have access to AVChat admin interface, follow these steps:

  1. Go to WordPress backend .
  2. Go to Settings -> AVChat3 .
  3. In the Permissions section , you will have the option to select which user role has access to the admin interface of the chat (Check the "Can access admin chat").
  4. Be sure to click on the Update Options button.
    5. Change permission to diferent user roles to access the admin interface of AVChat

4. Location of AVChat files in a WordPress installation

Everything is in /wp-content/plugins/avchat-3-pro/ .

5. Opening up the video chat in a pop up

  1. Go to WordPress admin area.
  2. Go to Settings -> AVChat3 .
  3. In the General Settings section , you will have the option to select the desired preferences for openning the chat.
    4. Change the display mode of the AVChat

6. Placing ads around the video chat

As the video chat is embeded into a WordPress page, the ads that are usualy around your WordPress page will also be provided along the side of the chat.

If you have any questions about the placement of ads, please don't hesitate to contact support@avchathq.com

7. WordPress's user roles and limiting features for specific user roles

By default, there are 5 user roles in WordPress : Administrator, Editor, Author, Contributor and Subscriber. In build number 1925 we added the support for the Visitors as well. You can change the default settings by following the next steps:

  1. Go to WordPress admin area.
  2. Go to Settings -> AVChat3.
  3. In the Permisions and Settings sections you will have the option to select the desired preference for every user role .

You can add new user roles by installing this plugin: User Role Editor

8. Allowing visitors to join the video chat

By default, visitors are allowed in the chat but if you want you can deny them access.

You can prevent visitors from entering the chat by logging in to the WP backend area > Settings > AVChat 3 and uncheck the Can access chat option for the Visitors column.

Visitor's usernames

Visitors get a random username (for example "user_7261") but they can modify it in the login screen. To prevent them from modifying it edit integration.php from the plugin installation folder and at the bottom set $avconfig['changeuser'] = 0 instead of $avconfig['changeuser'] = 1.

9. Allow users to login with their Facebook account

By default, Facebook login is enabled, but in order to connect to the Facebook servers, you need to have an application registered under the same domain as your website. Follow the following steps to configure the Facebook login:

  1. Go and sign up for a Facebook API Key at:  http://developers.facebook.com
  2. Create new Facebook app. Facebook will automatically generate an App ID/API Key that will look similar to this this'41365952003784'Facebook API Key
  3. Be sure to complete the filed from "Website with Facebook login" under "Select how your website integrate with Facebook"
  4. Go to WordPress backend => Settings => AVChat3
  5. Under General Settings you will find the Facebook application ID field. Put there the App ID from above.
  6. Click Update Options

10. Changing the looks of AVChat to better fit your WordPress web site

10.1 Changing the background color

The background color of AVChat is defined in the HMTL web page that embeds the AVChat swf file. In this case it's in the: /wp-content/plugins/avchat-3-pro/avchat3.php file. If you want your website to have only this color, then you have to delete the background image URL from style.css because the image has priority over color.

  1. In order to change the color of the user interface you will need to open avchat3.php in a text editor, go to the end of the page and change the value of the bgcolor property here :

    • bgcolor : "#272727"
  2. Save the file and upload it back to the server.
  3. Done!

Here is an example that will result in a black background:

bgcolor : "#000000"

#000000 is the hexadecimal value for black.

10.2 Changing the background image

Changing the design & looks of AVChat is made through a single file: style.css. Here you can change the background image, fonts, etc.

  1. Navigate to the /wp-content/plugins/avchat-3-pro/style.css file and locate the .backgroundArea{ ... } section. It should be the first.
  2. Change this line from "summertime.swf" to whatever image or animated background you want(the image should be located in the same location as the style.css):
    backgroundImageUrl: summertime.swf ;
  3. Save the file and upload it to the server.
  4. Done!

Changing the design & looks of AVChat is explained in detail in the documentation for the standalone version.

The style.css is located in the same folder where the WordPress Plugin is installed in /wp-content/plugins/avchat-3-pro/

11. AVChat Plugin for WordPress and GPL

The AVChat Video Chat Plugin is licensed under the GPL v2 or later. Once you buy the plugin you can modify it and distribute it as long as you keep it under the GPL.

12. Removing the plugin

While logged in as and admin in the WP backend go to Plugins and click Deactivate followed by Delete for the AVChat PRO plugin.

This will remove the wp-content/plugins/avchat-3-pro folder and all it's contents.

The plugin's database holding the permissions for each user role and general settings will still remain tough. To remove it delete the wp_avchat3_general_settings and the wp_avchat3_permissions tables.

You might also want to remove the page holding the [chat] tag that was replaced by the plugin with the AVChat 3 software

13. Updating the plugin when a new version is available

First you should download the new archive from your private client area on http://avchathq.com

Then we need to remove the old version. While logged in as and admin in the WP backend go to Plugins and click Deactivate followed by Delete for the AVChat PRO plugin. This will remove the wp-content/plugins/avchat-3-pro folder and all it's contents.

You will now have to re-install the plugin and upload the AVChat 3 client side files again to the wp-content/plugins/avchat-3-pro folder, for more details check out the client side installation instructions.

Any existing settings or permissions will be kept. Any new settings or permissions added by the new version will most probably be empty, make sure you configure them as you wish for each user role from Settings > AVChat Video Chat PRO

14. Multisite support

WP has a special mode called Multisite. This mode has been introduced in 2010 in WP 3.0.

Starting with build 2359 the plugin adds support for installations of WordPress with multisite on.

A new WP user role is present in multisite setups:

Super Admin – somebody with access to the site network administration features and all other features.

In such an installation the plugin can either be network activated for all sites or individually activated.

After installation, the super admin can network activate it for all the websites or he can activate it individually for each of his websites.

If My Sites > Network Admin > Dashboard > Settings > Network Settings > Enable administration menus > [ ]Plugins is checked then other nework users can independently activate it for their websites too.

Network Activation

When network activated it can not be individually deactivated

When network activated you must visit the Settings > AVChat 3 Video Chat PRO page for each of the websites in the network for the permissions tables for AVChat3 to be created. Otherwise in the front end you will find the following error: 

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/observer/public_html/wp-content/plugins/avchat-3-pro/avchat3.php on line 86

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/observer/public_html/wp-content/plugins/avchat-3-pro/avchat3.php on line 136
When using a standard WP installation (non multisite) or when individually activating the plugin for each sub site in the network the tables are created at activation.

Network Users

When used in a multiste setup, the plugin will show a new column (role) in the Settings > AVChat Video Chat PRO area called Network users. These are users who belong to the network but they do not belong to any other website on the network other than their own. They have no role in other websites than their own.

Permissions and Settings

Each site on the nework can control the permissions and settings individually. This also means that each site on the network has to have their own connectionstring. It is possible for 2 or more websites to use the same connectionstring, in this case they will share the rooms and users list,etc. .




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