Guide

I have just spent a 'nice' evening trying to resolve character encoding problem on one of Tigase installations. The installation uses MySQL database. It took me a bit time to figure it out and it looks like it requires changes in a few places to make sure a correct encoding is always used.

I have updated the MySQL database initialisation guide and documented all the places and steps needed to have it working properly. Apparently creating tables with UTF-8 encoding is not enough, apparently MySQL 5.1.x and 5.0.x handle this differently. For MySQL 5.1.x you need updated code for all stored procedures.

Please have a look at the link given for more details. At the end of the page there is a section describing UTF-8 settings or MySQL. Most of them are not related to the Tigase server and might be useful for any database installation with data stored in UTF-8 character set.

The dependency for Tigase Utils Package has changed. This is important for everybody who builds the Tigase server manually from sources using Ant tool. The Maven handles all the dependencies automatically and scripts have been updated.

Please keep reading for more details how to compile the server from sources in current SVN repositories.

It has happened recently that we have tried very hard to fix a few annoying problems on one of the Tigase installations. Whatever we did, however the problems still existed after uploading a new version and the server restart. It worked fine in our development environment and it just didn't on the target system.

It turned out that due to a specific environment settings on the target system an old version of the Tigase server was always started regardless updates we were uploading. When I finally started looking at the installation the first indication that something is wrong was lack of any log files in place where I expected them.

We have made Minichat available just to demonstrate new stuff we are working on, to do some tests and collect your opinions. The feedback we have got exceeded our expectations. The most common question was: Can I/how can I install it on my website?

Installing the Minichat on your website is very simple so I am putting here instructions for all of you who want to include the Minichat client on your website and allow visitors to chat with you.

Just to remind you - this code is still under development and will be updated and changed very often. It may even stop working temporarily or permanently. We can even intentionally block certain users or IP addresses if we discover any abuse. If you are ready for this and still want to have it continue reading...