Trouble with random disconnects

[MyCuriousBrain]

My chat is looking great and I would like it to function great too. A friend of mine and myself have been using it two or three times a day now for the past week and a half or two weeks. We have noticed that at random times when we enter a message the message itself is not displayed but instead we see, "* Username has disappeared into the shadows." If I press up arrow I can see the message I intended to display. Sometimes along with this the user is disconnected as well and asked to enter a new nickname because the old one is taken. You have to wait for that user to timeout before you can reuse the original nickname.

Other then these few problems the chat system works great and would be a welcome and needed feature for my website. I am a novice at all of this so technical terms do not come easy for me, but please try and explain what I can do to start resolving the issues I am having.

Appreciate your program and the ability to communicate my problems here. Thanks!

~CB

[re*s.t.a.r.s.*2]

hi,

As default PFC doesn't have that phrase when a user time out or disconnect, is your chat a default installation?
please provide us some information, like version and if standalone...

regards..

[MyCuriousBrain]

I am running:

Theme firebug with 10 Widgets
You are using WordPress 3.2.1.
php Free Chat v1.3

Thanks for your help!

~CB

[MyCuriousBrain]

Sorry this is on a shared server hosted by HostGator.

[re*s.t.a.r.s.*2]

hi,

Well I can only tell your that I had same symptoms when I had Hostgator and phpfreechat..

since I have my own VPS server, it all disappeared magically..

regards.

[MyCuriousBrain]

I asked HostGator support to look at the server requirements here and they told me that they supply php Free Chat through cPanel QuickInstall on all of their sites.

That isn't the method I used though. I have used the plugin interface utility that comes with WordPress to install the php Free Chat plugin. This installation uses a file called chat.php in the place of index.php and leads to some confusion when browsing the FAQ and Forums for information here.

I just decided to uninstall php Free Chat and re-install again. This time instead of allowing the plugin utility of WordPress to do the full install I personally uploaded the files from wordpress.org to my server via FTP. We will see if this has helped at all.

Thanks!

~CB

[re*s.t.a.r.s.*2]

Hi,

Some other user has had same issues, timeouts and so forth, there is a thread related to that.. we don't know why or what makes this happens but it all points to hostgator hosting...

Installing the plugin or not its not going to give you same symptoms if the hosting service is the culprit...

regards.

[MyCuriousBrain]

This morning I joined the HostGator live support chat and talked with a technician. I did not state this time (as I have in the past) what program I was trying to install. I only said that the requirements stated that the hosting server cannot have the suphp module enabled and I asked if my shared server had that particular module enabled and the answer was, "Yes." When I asked if it could be disabled of course the answer was, "No, not on a shared server. Buy a VPS!"

So there is proof enough for me. I have heard it here and indirectly from the horses own mouth. php Free Chat will not work (properly) with HostGator shared servers. As for their VPS? We shal see...

Thanks for your assistance.

~CB