Etermaren ( XMPP Jappix Site ) Readme [Picture Intensive]

Figure this is probably the best place for it. It's kinda off topic. Pictures are in spoilers for size ( 1024x768 ). For the intent and purpose of this tutorial, we will assume you have never visited the site before / created an account.

So, the website is now located at this address. Now with more Felarya. Upon initial navigation this will be your screen:

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In the event they are unknown, in the upper left hand corner links to all the various major Felarya related sites can be found ( dA, Forumotion, Patreon, the Wiki ).

To create a new account, click on the yellow button that says "New Accounts". Your screen shall now appear as:

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This is not an email address! This is the XMPP / Jabber Identification, which is specified as <username> ( at ) <domain> ( dot ) <tld>. The only fields you need to enter are the username and password ( twice ). Clicking on register will create a new screen:

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The text "LogIn" is a hyperlink, click on it and you will be brought online to the service. The first login will provide an initial setup of basic options available on two tabs. The first tab is for general settings:

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Sounds - Play sounds when someone sends you a message in 1:1 chat. Defaults to ON.

Geolocation - Broadcasts where you are in the world. I personally recommend turning this off. Defaults to ON.

Offline Friends - Displays people in your friend list regardless of whether or not they are online.  I personally recommend turning this on. Defaults to OFF.

The second tab is a friend search. If you already know the information of your friends, you can go ahead and add them right now to your friend list. They have to accept you for their status to be seen by you. Two important things about Friend Search:

• In order to appear in search, you MUST opt-in for searching. You can fill out your account every line, and you will not show up in search unless you opt-in. We will cover this in a bit. The default is that users ARE NOT opted in to search.
  
• In order to be searched, you have to fill out at least one of these four fields. XMPP does not care if the fields are all the same - so Nickname and Real Name can be exactly the same. You are NOT required to fill out any information you are uncomfortable giving - but any information you DO provide is visible to all.
  

If the user meets these two conditions, you will see the following screen when you search for them ( here we assume you were searching for my account ):

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Note: For the "Add" and "Profile" buttons to appear, you must hover your mouse over the search results.

When you click on "Save" in the lower right hand corner of the popup, you will be presented with the Profile Screen:

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NONE of these fields are required - but as noted earlier, if you do not fill out the four used for search, even if you opt-in for searching, you will not be located on a search.

• Identity - General tab, has most of the information for the Profile
  
• Profile Image - Your avatar
  
• Others - Mainly location info, and your biography
  

With your information provided ( or not ) you will be delivered to the primary interface.

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Let's cover what all these sections are:

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Most is self explanatory. One thing that might not be - the microblog. This is called your channel, and it's basically like a miniature Twitter / RSS / Tumblr feed. If you are friends with someone, you can see their channel. I think most likely if it sees any use at all it'll probably be one of the places you can announce what rooms you are doing roleplays in. Maybe links to your character profiles or the like. But up to you.

At the moment, uploads are enabled - so if you want to attach a picture, you can do so. 25Mb is the current limit I think. This should let you share media if you desire.

Another area that requires some explanation - the control bar. Messages will alert you to new friend requests and the like. Profile allows you to edit your roster. Options will bring up the following screen, which has three tabs:

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And finally, disconnect logs you out of the service.

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Now then, lets start chatting! For the purposes of this tutorial, we will join the persistent channel "Lobby Room" which is open to all people.

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With the information typed in, hit "Enter" on your keyboard. You will then be here:

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This is a multi-user chat, or a chatroom. Anyone can create a chatroom. If you create a new chatroom of your own you will be given owner rights ( provided someone else has not already claimed it ). We'll cover that later. Now to explain what all the options here are:

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The one we'll look at more is Chat Favourites. This allows you to save certain options for this channel to change how you interface with it as a user. Click the + icon, and it will disappear. The chat is now in your favourites. Let's access it so we can make some changes.

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Click on the link "Manage your favorite groupchats".

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Click on the dropdown menu and select "lobby":

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Now we can make some changes:

• Name: The name of the room. Let's change this to "Lobby Room".
  
• Nickname: This is your name in the room. You can change this to whatever you like. In general rooms I would recommend you leave it to what people know you as. In an RP room, I'd recommend you use the name of the character you intend to play. This can be different across every room. PLEASE do not abuse this. Do not pretend to be other users, especially to flame or defame.
  
• Room: Leave This Alone.
  
• Server: Leave This Alone.
  
• Password: For the sake of the tutorial, leave this blank. In the future, if you are joining a password protected room specify the password here.
  
• Automatic: Do you want to join the room every time you log on? If so, click the check box.
  

Once you're all done, click Edit. The changes will be saved. Leave the room ( or logout ) and return ( or login ) and you should see your settings updated, like so:

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So time for a few more advanced areas.



First, we'll go over a simple item: opting in for user searching. This can be accessed by bringing up the more stuff menu here:

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And then clicking on the "Service Discovery" link. The screen will become this:

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Hover your mouse over the "Directories" section until a few buttons appear, like so:

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Click on the cog wheel icon, and then select opt-in for searching. This will allow you to be found via the "Friend Search" feature. You can opt out again in the future if desired.

Room Control

So, you've joined your own room. Since noone was there before you, you have been made the 'owner' of this room. As the owner, you have full control of the room and everything that occurs in it.

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Click the Gold Lock icon on the status bar to bring up the room administration menu:

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Here are what the settings mean:

• Subject: This is what is printed every time you enter the room.
  
• Name: Name of the room in the search directory.
  
• Description: Short description of the room in search directory.
  
• Make Room Persistent: Okay, this one is important. When you join a new room for the first time you are made owner. If everyone leaves the room, that room vanishes. Poof, it's gone. Any settings associated with that room vanish with it - including the fact that you once owned it. To make the room stay, you have to tick this option setting.
  
• Allow Occupants to Change Subject: Self explanatory.
  
• Who may discover real JIDS: lets users or only moderators determine who a user actually is ( since you can change nickname per room ).
  
• Password: Set a room password.
  
• The next two settings I have not yet tested myself, I believe they make it so that only certain people can talk / join the room ( even without a password ).
  
• Make Room Moderated
  
• Make Room Members Only
  
• Maximum Number of History Messages Returned by Room: If you leave the room, and return, how much information from the buffer will be available for you to view.
  
• Enable room logging: This creates a room log at the following location. Anyone can see this log, so if you want your room to be private DO NOT ENABLE THIS OPTION.
  
• Enable Stanza Limits: Prevents spam. Talk to me for more information ( technical in nature ).
  
• Authorizations: This is where you setup a userlist ( if you desire it ). Also what determines who can control the channel.
  
• Others: If you made the channel persistent, or if you just want to destroy it OMG RIGHT NOW, this is the big red button that lets you do it.
  

External Clients

Technical Details - Skip if uninterested:

If you would prefer not to use the BOSH ( that would be what you see when you visit the website above ) interface ( particularly if you like keeping your own logs automatically saved to your machine ) you may use an external client to connect to the XMPP servers.

External clients that are known to work with XMPP include Trillian, Digsby, Adium, Jitsi, and Miranda. Some of these may also be available on mobile.

To connect to the service from an external client, you will need to setup a XMPP / Jabber account with the following information:

Username: Your JID ( it will be in the form of <username>@felarya.club )
Password: Your password
Server: felarya.club

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Mobile Clients

So, Etermaren is not responsive and will not function on mobiles well, if at all. Mobile clients are few and far between, with the landscape on Apple damn near barren. Fortunately, there are a few clients on Android you can use.

The preferred one following testing is to use jTalk. jTalk supports many of the XEPs straight out of the box, and will even allow you to register on the Etermaren XMPP for a new account ( none of the others will let you do this ). It is also the only mobile client that allows vCard viewing and room bookmarks ( ie, if you setup an autojoin room on Etermaren, this behaviour will be mimiced by jTalk without additional setup ).

If you cannot / do not want to use jTalk, your choices become far more limiting. The next step would be Xabber. Xabber does not support registration or presence, but does support chat rooms. What this means is that you cannot create a new account with Xabber, nor can you see who is in a room with you. And finally, you have a multitude of clients like Plus.IM. These clients do not allow registration and do not provide access to the XEP necessary for chat rooms. Which, in my opinion, makes them quite worthless.

To use a mobile client, you will need the following informations:

User: <yourusername>@felarya.club
Pass: Your password

For more information on how to use a mobile client to connect to Etermaren or any troubleshooting doing so, please PM me on the forums. Note: I use jTalk on my work Android phone as my connection, but I have done some testing with Plus.IM and Xabber to determine their feature sets.

Text Formatting:

Ilceren developed some regex code so that we could add BBCode to the Jappix site.

Code:

[b]bold[/b]
[i]italics[/i]
[u]underline[/u]
[s]strikethrough[/s]

Smileys:

Smileys no longer automatically display / parse. If you want to use smileys, use the dropdown menu to insert them. Otherwise, they will display literally, as the text you input.

So.... What is all this?

Seems a lot fancier than the IRC. Though it also becomes more complicated thanks to that I suppose.

I do like the background though.