#iochat

This update's focus is almost entirely on server moderator features, so from the surface it may not look like such a big deal, however a lot of massive changes were made to the server code resulting in much better server performance, memory management & several server moderator features.

We've brought back server kicks and bans for those naughty users who don't quite like sticking to our terms of service. We are pretty lenient, but it is still mandatory that you abide by those terms. The Server Control Panel has received several new upgrades to better equip your trusty server mods to make sure everything runs smoothly, and the community stays strong!

Furthermore you can now Report users that are bothering you. This will inform us that the user is a bad egg, and we can take actions to prevent them from harassing other users. It is still advised that you Block the user ( Right next to the Report button ), they will have no idea that you have blocked or reported them, they will believe you are still receiving their messages, but you will not see them.

Today's update is more about performance than features. I've spent a few hours chipping away at the clunky codebase, reducing it by over 2,000 lines.

First off, I've completely removed the dependent library "Jwee" which I only ever used for cookies - there was a time when I dreamed of some nifty animations, but it simply isn't worth that extra weight. Secondly, it seems there were some unused functions lurking within the codebase, they have now been removed. This allows the server less to give, and the client less to load. These are good things.

A few tweaks to the site bring a user count to the home page, you can now see how many users are currently logged in, though this doesn't mean they're in any rooms or even chatting at all. The dark room theme has been updated to show genders, and the reputation text shadows have been thrown out, they were ugly anyway.

A few bugs have also been fixed, and some configurations changed. Room owners can still be banned, technically, but when they re-join, the system will notice that they are the room owner, and let them in anyway, so you can’t be locked out of your own room for 24 hours anymore!

The home page is now organized by active users, instead of total users. Rooms with more activity will be prioritized over rooms with mass amounts of idle users, this ensures that the top of the list is a room that is interesting, not just full.

Finally, an added "news bar" has been added to the top of the screen to inform you of the happenings around the chat. You can completely ditch this bar by clicking [x] at the right of it, but i suggest clicking the center of the bar first to see what it wants.

DONE:

Removed JWEE library from client.

Removed redundant functions from codebase.

Added # of users online to home page.

Room owners will now evade bans.

Configured rooms to sort by active users, not total users.

Removed text shadows in dark theme.

Genders now visible in dark theme.

Added "news" bar to top of site.

This update is a prime example that looks are barely a fraction of the work that goes behind development. Though 1.1.7 brought us a lot of very interesting features, It is guaranteed that this update will yield a much greater reaction.

If you can’t tell for yourself, the home page has changed a little bit. I’ve modernized the design for a more efficient look, though it still functions mostly the same. Under the hood, we’re now using a static page vs. a JavaScript-generated page, making development much easier and preparing us for the search engine coming in 1.1.9. For now, we adjust to the visual changes. When you click the home button, the home page will refresh, otherwise it will refresh automatically every 60 seconds.

With this update a few configurations have been changed. The popular room list has been extended to hold 10 active rooms, allowing more rooms to be seen. Your Joined history has been extended to 25 rooms, and the maximum amount of rooms you can join is now at 5 rooms.

And last but certainly not least, you can now change the site theme in your menu by going to "Shell Theme" and selecting either Light or Dark. This will effect context menus, the tab bar, and the home page!

Also, Internet Explorer allows you to change your theme now. Neat!

DONE:

Re-designed homepage using Flat UI.

Extended popular room list to 10 rooms.

Extended room join history to 25 rooms.

"Shell Theme" settings added to menu.

Shell themes Light and Dark added.

Extended room limit for registered users to 5 rooms.

IOHQ manages the development & promotions of IO-Chat.com, a chat site where users can create their very own chatroom!

Tonight I challenged myself to a bit of penetration testing on the accounts of my own site, IO-Chat.com. In a couple of hours with some redbull, I've developed a bot that attempts to bruteforce accounts with a number of methods to determine the vulnerability of that account. This is in regards to the next update's Security Initiative that will be elaborated on at a later point.

At the moment, the bot's abilities are fairly minimal. It does the following:

Compares each user’s name to their own password.

Compares each user’s password to everyone else’s name.

Compares each user’s password with 10,000 popular passwords.

As a result of this scan, which took the bot 3.2 seconds to perform, the results showed me that 139 accounts were matched by one (or more) of these commands. 24 accounts were considered high-risk, and I will force them to change their password in 1.1.7

This has been an eye-opening night, I've sort of slacked on making users realize how unsafe their account can be with a weak password, but thanks to 1.1.7, this won't be a concern any longer.

In the future, I hope to program this bot to also do the following:

Compare user’s password to everyone else’s password.

Compare user’s password with variants of their date of birth.

Compare user’s password with variants of their email address.

Compare password to words in dictionary.

Compare password to words and phrases in urban dictionary.

The 1.1.2 release laid the framework for room creation, and 1.1.3 is finally delivering it. With this release, any registered user will be able to create and edit their own chat room on IO-Chat.com. This has been long awaited and has taken quite a bit of effort on my end to deliver properly, so I sincerely hope you enjoy it. Each registered user is able to create 1 room as of now, but in the future I expect to allow users to create multiple chat rooms.

The room control panel ( accessed by typing /admin in your room ) is very minimal. You can change basic settings like the room name, motd, description and about, and also assign moderators. Moderators have to be registered to be assigned, so encourage anyone you trust with that power to register their name on IO-Chat so that they can help you moderate your room.