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I'm Deborski's husband, but I'm not an uber-geek :)
For a completely free chat option, there is PHPOpenChat. It's functional, but does not look nice. And it will take some work to integrate it with vBulletin.
For low cost options there is Flash Chat Room - integrates with Wordpress, vBulletin and IPB it is $49 or $59 if you want to remove the flasherize logos.
then there is cometchat PHP chat software, Footer chat, In-page chat software | CometChat it is $49
and finally arrowchat Live chat software, Online chat software, Facebook chat - ArrowChat it is $45 and many reports lean to this one being better than cometchat.
All of the prices are one time fees.
There are many subscription options like Evolve too...but all the ones I looked at would only handle 5-10 chat users at a time for their free ones.
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If we're really considering changing the chat engine, let's take into account several trolls that frequent the chat and have an engine that allows block/ignore users.
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I do not know about cometchat, but arrowchat allows ignoring at the user level.
And it allows blocking by name and by IP at the admin level.
Here's a link to a demo account to see user and admin features.
ArrowChat Demo - The Front Page
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I hope someone is able to fix the chat soon... today it keeps saying it's full no matter how many times I refresh and yesterday it did not even show up for some people...
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The chat is now visible to registered users only, so it should be less busy (less inactive guests who were just using up the limit).
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It seems to be working much better. Thank you!! :beer: