Introducing AOL Userplane Community Functions

By Thomas Myer
January 10 2008

Unless you've been living under a rock, you're surely aware of all the blogging and buzz around community applications for web sites. Strictly speaking, of course, community isn't exactly new. After all, community is one-third of the irresistibly alliterative troika for web site success: community-content-commerce.

The question for the experienced PHP developer, if you want to add community features to an existing site, is: what kind of community features are easy to install and to work with? There's only so much time to learn new tools, after all. It's more important to get the process rolling and to rest assured that the feature set you choose will cover your needs.

When it comes to community, it's easy to formulate a list of requirements: you want to allow discussion between and among customers, members, users, vendors, or employees; in real time; and you want to get it set up quickly and with little hassle. It's just too easy to get tangled up in a process that doesn't give you what you want, with a price tag that's just too high to bear.

Plenty of options exist that allow you to add different community functions to your site, but does an offering exist that allows you to quickly add that functionality to your site, for free, with a minimal learning curve?

The answer is: yes, of course. AOL Userplane fits the bill quite nicely. This article will introduce you to Userplane in general, and to Userplane Webchat specifically.

What Is Userplane?

Userplane is a suite of five hosted web applications that provide the tools for you to enhance your online community. The applications are surprisingly lightweight, and require very little involvement on your part to get started. For example, you can simply add some JavaScript to your site to get started with Webchat.

The ultimate goal of Userplane is to provide you, the PHP developer, with a fairly robust suite of functionality that you can use with minimal start-up time.

Although this article will focus primarily on the free copy-and-paste scripts used for Webchat, here's the entire list of applications available in the Userplane suite:

• Userplane Webchat 2. Delivers full-featured, text/voice/video multi-user chatting.
• Userplane Webmessenger 2. Provides live presence and text/voice/video instant messaging.
• Userplane Webrecorder. Allows users to record and share voice/video messages.
• Userplane Desktop. Detects live-user presence on the desktop and delivers site notifications and alerts. Runs in your desktop tray.
• Userplane Feeds. Provides free content APIs.

Together or à la carte, these five tools can enhance any site, and give it the extra community features it needs by adding vital communication services. For example, an online dating site could easily use Webrecorder to allow users to create video profiles or leave each other video mail. Or a technical support web site could use Webchat and Webmessenger to bring additional customer service to any support call.

Getting Set Up with Cut-and-Paste Scripts

Now that you've had a general overview of Userplane and the applications available in the suite, let's go through the process of adding a free copy-and-paste script to your site that will allow users to connect to your community.

The first step to adding the copy-and-paste script to a site is to go to http://www.userplane.com and click the Instant Community icon. This process requires that you register with Userplane, but don't worry--it's free.

When you sign up, create a unique screen name and provide Userplane with a live e-mail address--you'll have to confirm your membership by following the instructions in an e-mail. You will also need to provide your birth date and a password.

Within a few minutes, you'll receive a confirmation e-mail from Userplane. Simply follow the instructions in the e-mail to confirm your account.

Adding the JavaScript to Your Site

After you've confirmed your account, you can log in and take the simple steps to add the JavaScript functionality to your site.

1. Log in.
2. Click Get Started!
3. At this point, you have four choices:
• Buddy List Script. Clicking this button produces a JavaScript snippet that gives you direct access to Userplane Userlist. The Buddy List script implements a web "buddy list" for Webmessenger.
• Webchat Script. Clicking this button produces a JavaScript snippet that gives you direct login to a Webchat interface.
• HTML Link. Clicking this button produces HTML that you can use on sites that don't allow scripts (such as MySpace).
• URL. Clicking this button produces a simple URL you can paste into any application or HTML page.




4. Copy the JavaScript snippet that appears in the form field, and paste it into the HTML of a site you administer. Make sure that you put the code snippet between the <body> and </body> tags.

Please note that it's very important not to alter the JavaScript or HTML snippet in any way. Embedded within the URL or script tag are various important IDs that are relevant to your account.

For the purposes of this article, I placed the JavaScript snippet in a sidebar on our company site (http://www.tripledogs.com). Here's what it looks like on our Contact Us page:

When users log in, they'll see a Webchat window that looks something like this:

Configuring Your Application

You can easily change the way your application behaves by configuring certain settings. You can configure rooms, emoticons, and background images, and control forbidden words.

1. Log in.
2. Click App Settings.
3. Click Community Preferences.
   On this portion of the UI, you can enable audio/video chat, set room timeouts, restrict access to the URL, and control how many users can participate, in addition to how long their messages can be.




4. Scroll down to Forbidden Words.
   This portion of the UI also has a simple purpose: here you can type a list of comma-separated words that you want to ban from your site. Any word used during a chat that matches this list will be replaced with ****.

Any configuration adjustments you make will be instantly uploaded to your application.

Inviting Users

Now that you've become a Userplane user, installed the code snippet on your site, and configured your application, you need to get the word out about your new community features. Fortunately, Userplane gives you the means to invite users to participate in your community discussion.

To invite users, follow these steps:

1. Log in.
2. Click Users.
3. Scroll down to the Invite Users section.
4. To invite users, type their Userplane IDs or e-mail addresses in the form field (separate with commas).
5. Customize your welcome message by filling in the custom message field.
6. Click Invite.

Banning Users

Sometimes you have to ban users. Their behavior or language might be out of line or not to your liking or standards. With Userplane you can ban individual users or entire ranges of IP addresses.

To ban users, follow these steps:

1. Log in.
2. Click Users.
3. Scroll down to the Users section.
4. You can ban users by typing their Userplane ID or by searching for their ID. You can also ban an individual IP address or a range of IP addresses.
5. Click Select All, and then select Ban from the drop-down list.
6. Click OK.

Userplane Money

One of Userplane's most exciting features is Userplane Money. In short, Userplane Money earns you, the web site developer (or webmaster), money while providing community features to your users.

Signing up for Userplane Money is free and requires a second registration. After you've signed up for Userplane Money, Userplane is able to monetize your chat traffic via rotating--but unobtrusive--banner and text ads. Through the Userplane installation scripts, all ad impressions are credited to the respective account, and a significant portion of the advertising revenue is shared with the publisher of that Userplane account.

To put it simply, the more users your site has and the more active they are in your chat rooms, the more money you make. All payouts are made via PayPal, so you'll need to have an account set up to get paid.

To get started with Userplane Money:

1. Log in.
2. Click Userplane Money.
3. Click I Agree after reading the license agreement.
4. Set up your account to receive payments by clicking Setup Pay Me Now.

Summary

In this article, you've learned a little bit about Userplane's suite of tools, and in particular, how to quickly and easily get started with the free copy-and-paste community script. The script allows you to link to your community from your web site, and offer basic community services to your site visitors.

In future articles, we'll explore more advanced tools, such as Webchat (and its variant, Minichat), Feeds, and Webrecorder.