Jump to content

Should Babble Return?

Michael

By Michael

 Share

Recently I was asked to look into creating a "live event" system. Sorta like "status update" but for general news/tweets/articles/etc, that could later be converted into a pages page at the end of the live event. This got me thinking about how live event systems work. To be effective, they have to be able to deliver the information in real time, there are only a handful of ways to do this efficiently. Ajax is simply out of the question in most cases, cause it can be a huge resource hit if more than 20 or so people are actively viewing the live event, so this got me thinking about babble once again. One of the things that set babble apart from other chat systems, was the fact it used websockets to deliver the messages to the connected users instead of relying on ajax to retrieve a list of new messages. this allowed for much faster real time communication, as the message being sent and received were almost instantaneous, with the biggest limiting factor being the connection speed of the user.

However, this required special software to achieve. I opted to use node.js to serve as the websocket host. this would've required a separate server for site to run the babble node.js app on or use my service. Both of these required additional resources from both the client and myself, to implement fully. Now as most of you know, I am not some fairly large corporation or even a large or medium or small business, I'm one person, with the resources of 1 person.  So running the service for me was a costly endeavor for me. Even if it is more of a pita, the self hosted option is honestly better for everyone involved. Yes self hosting a nodejs server could be more expensive for some, but for most it might actually be cheaper. The servers I had, I had 2 of them at one point, then rolled back to 1 cause of cost for version 3 (but it was a more powerful server than the previous 2 I had). I tried to evenly distribute the cost of the service to the packages for babble (which at the time of the service, I was not making any money on the app itself and the service cost i was mostly in the hole on always). This was cause the size of the server had to be large to handle the load it would have, so more load, more cost, and then more cost to you. So with a self hosted server, you could scale to your needs, i would honestly say most sites would need a very cheap vps from like digital ocean or aws (around $6 to $12 a month).

So if I were to bring back Babble, it would also include a live event system in it. I have several ideas to improve it to, one of the ideas i had was a "watch together" type system, that would allow multiple people to watch the same video (say from youtube and the creator of the watch together would have control over the video, like pausing/ff/rewind/etc) and have a chat going among those watching it. 

If i was to bring back Babble, it would be apart of the subscription model, but it would not have a service attached to it this time. It would strictly be a self hosted thing, I of course would offer a setup service for those who needed it. 

Let me think, here are some questions to ponder:

  • Should i bring back babble and why.
  • what features would like to see added
  • what changes would you like to see
  • what concerns you'd have with running your own node.js server
  • should alternatives be explored instead of node.js+websockets
  • whatever other question/comment you might have

 

  • Like 1
 Share
Go to articles

User Feedback

Recommended Comments

Joey Matthews

I have a dedicated server, which barely uses its resources. Would Babble allow me to run it in the same environment?

Babble has the potential to be a very good chat app, which could be used as a live event system. It gives us site owners plenty of options to maximise its use. I think it's a good idea, personally, I wouldn't need a chat system, but I can see why some members would.

I think, change wise, it would be good to have flexible options which would allow you to choose how exactly you want to use babble. Such as being able to still have chat rooms, but live events too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Michael
8 hours ago, Joey Matthews said:

I have a dedicated server, which barely uses its resources. Would Babble allow me to run it in the same environment?

 

well the best solution is a separate server with its own domain or sub-domain, with its own certs. however you can it is doable.

solution 1:

the easiest solution would be to change the port babble uses. by default if you are on https, it uses port 443, otherwise port 80. problem on a server running a web server, those 2 ports are already in use and nodejs wouldn't be able to use them. so you would need to open up a port in your servers firewall, a port that isn't used by something else. 

this has its own set of problems tho, the first one is having to open up another port on your servers firewall. the other problem it opens up, networks often block all ports except 80 and 443, so people on those networks wouldn't be able to connect to babble. like i mentioned, this is most def the easiest solution, its not really the most ideal one.

solution 2:

in nginx and apache there is such a thing called "reverse proxy" (well in one of them its called that, in the other it has a different name, but i can't remember which or what it is, but its the same thing more or less).  basically with the reverse proxy, you setup your webserver to handle the connection to nodejs internally. 

this one requires a bit of work to setup, on apache it requires a few modules to be installed. in my testing back in the day, i found nginx to be the easiest to setup (as its built in functionality) and it also performed a fair bit better imho than apache does. 

to me this is the ideal of the two solutions i give here. it doesn't require any ports to be opened, it also looks cleaner.

solution ?3

there might be other solutions, it's been since like 2016/17 since i last looked into alternatives. the service really rendered those solutions kinda moot, as everyone on the self hosted version jumped ship for the service. 

8 hours ago, Joey Matthews said:

Babble has the potential to be a very good chat app, which could be used as a live event system. It gives us site owners plenty of options to maximise its use. I think it's a good idea, personally, I wouldn't need a chat system, but I can see why some members would.

 

was gonna have the live events be a "customized" room, that would be open to everyone (or restricted if you wanted it). then at the end of it, you'd issue a command to close it down, and the room would disappear and its content would be added to pages (if it is installed, or give you an option to have it just archive itself and/or to pages). 

it would be fun to try to add a chat bot to it. it has 'bots' but nothing too complex, but get one of these natural language models like chatgtp or tabbyml (which is free, and customizable, but would require its own setup too, but i haven't played with tabby's chat ability). 

8 hours ago, Joey Matthews said:

I think, change wise, it would be good to have flexible options which would allow you to choose how exactly you want to use babble. Such as being able to still have chat rooms, but live events too.

babble is very customizable. you can set it up where you can have private rooms, private messages, rooms have a ton of configuration to them, there are "bots" (even the ability to add in your own custom bots), command (ability to add in custom commands), there are also different layouts for it, which i might remove. the "global bar" was never popular, even tho i thought it was cool as hell :). it will make building it easier if i took out the global bar. 

anyway, if you have anything more specifi in mind, don't shy away, let me know. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites


Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×
×
  • Create New...