Business roadmap need for phpFreechat

[guoxianghao]

Yes, we already have a roadmap for developers with todo list.
However a business roadmap is needed.
The options:
1. To be the most popular, free, easy to use chat in php community.
2. Work toward a commercial product. Please check out Campfire(http://campfirenow.com/), we share the same function, the same key technology(AJAX).
3. your suggestions....

[phpfreechat]

Maybe we need it but I can't concentrate my efforts on two side.
What do you propose exactly ?

[Djamoer]

I think business roadmap will be great, but it will concentrate more on OpenSource community, rather than the one from campfire.

Kerphi, I believe having a clear set of roadmap on how this project will be funded and etc will be necessary, to ensure this project won't be left dead after all the core members lost their excitement. I hope this will be a better chat script compare to campfire, but we'll see what's gonna happen. I don't think it's impossible for us to achieve that.

Sincerely,

[guoxianghao]

Well, I fully agree with Djamoer.
The project should have a goal and some clearly defined milestones.
The goal depends. It might be the best opensource php chat that can be easily integrated into existing php applications or games , or a better group chat app than campfire, etc.
The development process and functions should be guided by the goal, not the all the feature requirments in the forum(sorry). In this way, the project will go on even some core members lost their excitement because new members who was encouraged by the final goal will join in and continue.

[Djamoer]

Well not really causing the core member to loose interest in the development. I'm a programmer and I know how sad it is to see one of my creation being taken over, while I'm not in charge with it anymore. I know it's an ego from most programmers, believe me, most programmers are melancholic, that's why they treat their code like their baby

Anyway, a clear roadmap is needed, but the one who decide on the roadmap will the core team, which I think this will lead to more excitement from the core developers side, while the community will adaptate to the roadmap. Whoever agree to the roadmap will join the community, and whoever doesn't agree with the roadmap can go to another direction by buuilding their own script or fork phpFreeChat.

Well to be honest, I believe core developers/teams will love to listen to the community as well and keep re-adjusting the roadmap. Remember, in software development process, software design requirement always keep evolving, and there is no fix route to where we are ehading, but a clearly defined vision can help guiding us to the right direction. Just to emphasize it, vision is something that is far beyond releasing software to meet certain features, but vision will be more abstract, like what guoxianghao stated, it might be creating an easy to integrate ajax chat application or something like an easy to use ajax chat, with speed and reliable in mind, and having a more flexible core, with no bloated features that will drag down the performance of the script.

Well it's all depends on kerphi I believe,as the lead developer in here.
We would love to hear your suggestion kerphi

[phpfreechat]

Any ideas are welcomed, but it's right that we need clear goals.
Maybe what we need is a list of features ? (is it a business roadmap ?)
I propose :
- simple to install and to integrate into an existing project
- simple to extends (new commands, bots ...)
- irc like commands
- irc like channels
- irc like moderation
- private messages
(- be the most popular webchat ???) <= this is not a feature but is it part of the buisness roadmap ?

Maybe I forgot something ?
Remember I'm not a buisness man, just a developper so please correct me if I'm wrong.

[Djamoer]

Kerphi, I might not be an expert in business kind of deal, but I do like this kinda stuff as well. So I'll help you to set one up.

First a little explanation about the different between goal and vision.

Vision is something we dream. So when I said I dream of becoming the president of United States, than it will be my vision. For now, don't bother about the content of the vision yet, it's just an example . Now, goals is more like a steps that need to be taken to achieve that vision. So for example my goals will be to study harder in school, achieve a phd degree in political science, becoming an honor student, get a position in governement body, work my way up as a senator, gather a lot of fans from my citizens, and later becoming a president. So all of these are my goals that need to be achieved for me to reach my vision. That's one of the reason why we need to have a really2 big dream/vision, it's because most people miunderstand the different between vision and goals. We can only have one vision, but we need seevral goals to achieve that vision.

So in phpFreeChat, I would propose to have a clear statement of vision, while the features list will be the goals itself that will define the roadmap that we'll take. The vision will not be to technical, but it will help us guide our goals/roadmap to the right direction.

I'll write it out for us, and I'll post it in here, when I have time. Until then, if somebody want to chip in or express their ideas, it will be AWESOME. Kerphi, feel free to post what your opinion, because I want make sure that what we come up with will always satisfied both the founder and the community

[phpfreechat]

Your contribution will be very appreciated, besides I prefere to concentrate on the technical aspect of pfc.
With a first draft, all the community will be able to discuse on it and propose ideas to find the best way to go.

Thank you.

[Djamoer]

Vision & Mission
Breaking the limitation of stateless http protocol, by delivering a chat interaction web application that can be installed and integrated easily into an existing web application.

Goals
* Faster response with less server intensive resources
* IRC like command interface
* Private chat
* Themes Support (DONE)
* Multi Lingual (DONE)

[phpfreechat]

[...] by delivering the a chat interaction [...]

Is it a mistake ? (mybe I'm wrong, my english is bad)

* Faster response with less server intensive resources

Already done ? It's right you can infinitly optimize but what is the limit ?

[Djamoer]

Fixed, sorry about that, for some reason when I re-type the sentence, I miss that "the"
Well, for now all we need to care only the vision & mission statement. The goals will be compiled by you and us kerphi.

In terms about the limit of optimization, are we going to test load the script? I think there has to be a way for us to make sure that we put the script to the edge, so we we can come up with a better solution compare to some other free chat script out there. I think performance is always going to be an issue. It's fast for now, but how fast do we want it to be? For that, I will leave it up to the future. By the time we have more great use of this software, people will start contributing idea and request. Maybe when some people start saying they have performance problem with the script, then it's time for us to stress test this system, other than that, I think we are good for now ;D

[Nemako]

Hi all,

I have not a lot of comments to do concerning previous posts, I agree.

Just to repeat Djamoer, it could be fine to test the chat with quite a lot of users. I think that if pfc wants to be famous and useful it must support many users and we have to say that yes it works with a lot of users, "we test it" !!

Then I think that pfc could be very popular if it supports plugin for several website. I think about blog or cms (dotclear, mambo, ....), forum (punbb, vbulletin ?,...) ...

[Djamoer]

Hi all,

I have not a lot of comments to do concerning previous posts, I agree.

Just to repeat Djamoer, it could be fine to test the chat with quite a lot of users. I think that if pfc wants to be famous and useful it must support many users and we have to say that yes it works with a lot of users, "we test it" !!

Then I think that pfc could be very popular if it supports plugin for several website. I think about blog or cms (dotclear, mambo, ....), forum (punbb, vbulletin ?,...) ...

I would say that the integration of this pfc into other system will be very2 easy. Seeing from the parameters architecture provided, I can see that this system is one of the most easy-to-integrate system.

Btw, can I know the result of the stress test that you guys did? I believe it will be very helpful to some of us that are planning to use this for large community containing more than a hundred users online at the same time.

[snoopy]

If I may post here some thoughts:

I am not a programmer. But I use various open source software on my sites and also many software I had to pay for.

What I do think is the most made mistake in OS software is the lack of focus and the lack of overview, what else is out there for the target group the software shall be made for.

IMHO you should first make a spreadsheet about the top 10 products in your market with their features, advantages and disadvantages etc.

After looking at this spreadsheet, it will be easy for you to define a roadmap. It will not help you to make another "metoo" product. Your target group is doing the same. They compare different alternatives and weight advantages vs. disadvantages.

I am looking for ages for a very good chat script. So far I have found none. It was always the same. They are neither able to handle many users at the same time (more than 100), nor do they have the admin and Moderators rights you need to run a big Chat like this.

They are almost always very slow as soon as you have more than 20 users online, they crash and (mandatory) basic functions are missing to be able to manage Chats in this size with moderators.

Just think of it what kind of control instruments you NEED to be able to make a chat with so many users a success and not a nightmare.

Integration is nice and ton of iceons and eye-catching features too, but it does not help me, if the functionality I need is simply not there. I much more prefer a stable chat for huge traffic that REALLY works instead of a nice layout integration or "mee-too product.

If you want to buy a car, you also want to make sure it does what you need before thinking about the beautey of the colour...

AFAIK there is not a single chat software out there, which has a committment like:

"we are THE Chat, if you want to run it with many users & if you need professional moderation features".

This is a market niche IMHO and a REAL competitive advantage which should be in a road map included.

Just my 2 cents...