Best language/environment to program a website to provide a message board / chat room? And why?

Question

I want to make a website that provides an integrated message board / chat room. In other words - you can either chat on a topic interactively, or post message board messages. I plan to use javascript to make the chat interface interactive.

What is the best programming language or environment to implement this?

I was planning on using Ruby on Rails, but then wondered if there was a better environment. I'm worried about the performance if several hundred people are chatting all at once (in multiple chat rooms).

Also, don't just tell me a good way to do this - please also tell me *why*. Thank you!

Your help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

LAMP
Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (or Perl)

It covers the most territory with the most support. There are many sites and books which will provide support for a LAMP setup. (yes they actually call it LAMP)

It will still support your javascript and pretty much anything else you come up with.

Ruby on Rails is great but unless you have a specific reason to go that direction you have to consider that you would be going from a ton of online answers to a much smaller answer base. So if learning RoR deeply is not your plan then I would go with LAMP so that you can just google a quick fix to things that come up.

Maybe in a couple more years RoR will give the basic LAMP setup a run for its money. But for now, most internet 1-person-managed servers are a LAMP setup.

Answer 2

Do you ever attempt IRC (internet relay chat)? a number of the communities on efnet, dalnet and undernet were round for over a decade and do not tolerate this style of element you're describing. different nets like gamesurge and freenode cater to really specialist communities, internet gaming and open source software developement and help respectively. you may acquire a shopper extremely extremely or use a communicate client like Gaim or Trillian to connect. you should likely also study a short academic that would help you understant the universe of irc. also you may search for the internet for irc channels (#channelname) that correspond for your pastimes. strong luck.