Hello,
I used for a couple of days the beta version. Some comments - ideas are the following.
i) New commands: /ignore /unignore user. A user enters this command in order not to receive private or public messages from another user. /ignorelist should show who is currently ignored. Ideally it should be saved between user's logins.
ii) Admin should be able to view user's IP. I believe that next to the user (in the list) there should be a small icon that admin could view his details: IP, real IP (behind proxy)
iii) Kick command should show a message on main channel also. Currently I think only a generic message "user is logged off" or similar is shown. I believe it would be better to have a "this user is kicked by admin". I may be mistaken but that's what I think.
iv) Automated ban after x kicks? Perhaps this could be nice.
v) Automated kick if a user enters a filtered word x times? This would help users not swear into the public rooms.
vi) There is no "banished" word. The correct word is "banned".
vii) In /banlist, is it possible to show the username next to the id (and ideally the IP as well)?
viii) Is it possible for user to avoid the ban? For example when he clears his cookies and changes IP address? What is the race where a banned user can gain access again without having the admin unban him?
ix) Perhaps there could be an "X" button on the right side of each user in the list (same x like the one that closes the channel on the upper tabs). This could be the /ignore command. Also, configurable by admin, there could be an option to kick/ban a user with more than X ignores (perhaps 1/3 of the channels users). This way the users could ignore someone annoying and he could be automatically kicked without any administration being online. Could be nice for trolls and malicious users.
x) Is it possible to blink the whole tab (channel or user tab) and not just data/public/themes/default/images/ch.gif? It would make it easier to see the channels with new texts (now the ch.gif is a bit small I think). mIRC does this and it's very convenient. Or perhaps change the color of the ch.gif to something more catchy (green, red).
xi) Next to the "show userlist" icon, you could add another one icon for /clear command. That would be handy.
xii) Have a demo where the chat area is shown in a popup window. That would help a lot of starting webmasters.
xiii) Context menu for the admin. Click and show commands. For example click on a user in the list (right click?) and show available commands such as kick/ban/ etc. Same for the channel in order for an admin to create his own commands (from canned messages to warnings or common announcements). Again, this is mIRC style.
xiv) New command voice/devoice where a user can only have read access to the chat. This could be before kick. When a user is not voiced and tries to send something, a reply should be "you can only read and not send messages to this chat".
xv) I think that it's becoming mandatory to have some sort of user profiling (for the user to save his settings). This might happen externally (Ajax calls for example when a user adds someone in his ignore list) or an internal profiling should be implemented (which definately should be done via MySQL). I believe Ajax calls would be best in order not to add MySQL to the base of PFC. This way a good webmaster could implement external scripts for advanced functions (user registration, profiling, etc).
Some of my comments are very easy to do. I am using IRC for years and I think some ideas might be helpful to everyone.
Thanks
Eric