Integrate chat into your website in 4 easy steps

Shashwat Srivastava -

In this post I will show how to integrate a chat system into your website or blog which doesn't require any server side installation or modification. You don't need to install any third party script/module or use any IRC channel. The only requirement is that you should have an MSN account. And the best part is that its absolutely free! You can use this chat system for various purposes -

  • Provide customer support
  • Use for discussing some issue
  • Organize a web seminar
  • Get feedbacks from your website visitors

Microsoft allows you to access the Windows Live Messenger from multiple websites and also provides a simple HTML code snippet which you can use to integrate it into your website. To do so follow the simple steps given below -

  • The first thing you need to do is that go to the following link - http://settings.messenger.live.com/Applications/WebSettings.aspx. You will be prompted to login if you are not already logged on to MSN network.
  • Next choose the option - Allow anyone on the web to see my presence and send me messages and click on Save as shown below.
  • Now click on Create HTML under Web settings and then choose the IM window control and adjust its size and theme accordingly.
  • Towards the bottom of the page you will find the required code snippet. Copy and paste it in your webpage wherever you want to show the chatroom. Thats all!

Here is a screenshot of the working demo of the integrated MSN chat.