A great start for such an early version (0.4.0)

  • I’ve been eagerly awaiting a matrix chat box. (And also matrix based comments — look up Cactus Comments for that.)

    A review of my first experience setting it up. I first tried the option to make it appear as an icon on all blog pages.

    This Chatrix plugin at early version 0.4.0 provides a pop-up generic matrix chat box, in which a viewer can log in to their existing matrix account, and chat with other matrix users, no matter whether inside or outside wordpress in the same way as using any generic matrix messaging client.

    This early version doesn’t seem to integrate with wordpress beyond appearing on the page. First, it doesn’t seem to have a way to re-use the viewer’s wordpress login to help with logging in to a matrix account, either in the sense of acting as an OIDC provider or in the sense of simplifying the UX when viewer’s matrix account is on the same domain as the blog, like might be typical in an organization or family server setup, nor in having an ability to integrate with a local matrix server and offer to create a matrix account for the visitor who doesn’t have one. All these things could be good to see in future.

    Once logged in to a matrix account, in the pop-up version it didn’t seem to take notice of the plugin configuration setting for default room: once I logged into my matrix account, I saw a list of all my current room memberships and had to find or create a suitable chat room on my own.

    However, when inserted as a block, with a particular matrix room chosen in the blpck settings, then the chat did load the specified room.

    In both pop-up and block modes, the matrix room currently has to be specified as a matrix room-id string (starting with exclamation mark) which is a bit awkward but only for the blog admin; that doesn’t affect the viewer. A minor improvement would be to allow a room “alias” (the user-friendly identifier starting with a hash character).

    This matrix chat currently allows just plain text and attchments, none of the rich text and other features that other matrix clients can do. That’s not inappropriate start, but soon it will need some options such as to limit the possible uploads, further customise the appearance, and have a way to introduce the viewer to the author of the blog.

    All in all, plenty of room for improvement but a good start for such an early version.

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  • Plugin Author Paulo Pinto

    (@psrpinto)

    Hi Julian! I’m one of the maintainers of this plugin.

    First of all, thank you for taking the time to writing the review and providing us with this very valuable feedback. We’re committed to continue to improve this plugin, and feedback like yours is invaluable.

    Please see inline replies to some of your points below.

    Thanks again!

    I’ve been eagerly awaiting a matrix chat box. (And also matrix based comments — look up Cactus Comments for that.)

    Myself and the other maintainers of the plugin (@akirk, @ashfame) recently discussed this possibility, and this is something we could explore in the future. However, I see it more as a longer term endeavor, for now we’re focused on improving the real-time chat experience. I’ve opened an issue for this nonetheless: https://github.com/Automattic/chatrix/issues/167.

    This early version doesn’t seem to integrate with wordpress beyond appearing on the page.

    Further and better integration with WordPress is one of our priorities going further, so please do let us know if you have specific suggestions on what to implement or improve. One of the things we’d specifically like to improve is making Chatrix look more integrated into the WordPress theme. We’re tracking that at https://github.com/Automattic/chatrix/issues/168/.

    it doesn’t seem to have a way to re-use the viewer’s wordpress login:

    1. either in the sense of acting as an OIDC provider
    2. or in the sense of simplifying the UX when viewer’s matrix account is on the same domain as the blog
    3. nor in having an ability to integrate with a local matrix server and offer to create a matrix account for the visitor

    Concerning 1., it is possible to use OIDC backed by the WordPress user database, so a user logged-in to WordPress can login to chat without needing to manually create a Matrix account. We have tested this but there is currently no documentation on how to set it up, I’ve opened an issue to address the lack of documentation: https://github.com/Automattic/chatrix/issues/169.

    Concerning 2. and 3., better UX on logging-in to chat is another of our priorities going further. I opened an issue to track one of the potential improvements we could make: https://github.com/Automattic/chatrix/issues/170.

    Once logged in to a matrix account, in the pop-up version it didn’t seem to take notice of the plugin configuration setting for default room: once I logged into my matrix account, I saw a list of all my current room memberships and had to find or create a suitable chat room on my own.

    This appears to be a bug. I’ve opened an issue to track it at https://github.com/Automattic/chatrix/issues/171 and we’ll be addressing it ASAP.

    In both pop-up and block modes, the matrix room currently has to be specified as a matrix room-id string (starting with exclamation mark) (…). A minor improvement would be to allow a room “alias” (the user-friendly identifier starting with a hash character).

    Great point, we will look into implementing this: https://github.com/Automattic/chatrix/issues/172.

    This matrix chat currently allows just plain text and attachments, none of the rich text and other features that other matrix clients can do. That’s not inappropriate start, but soon it will need some options such as to limit the possible uploads, further customise the appearance, and have.

    For now we will probably keep the chat experience limited, since we’d like to focus on other aspects of the plugin, like mentioned above. Maybe in the future this is something we can look into.

    a way to introduce the viewer to the author of the blog.

    This is a great idea! Do you have specific suggestions on how you’d see that happen?

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)
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