FlashChat Bot - Tips and Information

• Always install the Bot during first install. You don't need to use it, but this creates the database tables needed.
  
  
• When you first install your Bot, I recommend that you just use the defaults. Don't try to add a bot that has special settings in the Admin Panel.
  
  
• Bot names, and other information about a Bot you added is stored in the appdata/bots.txt file. This file must be chmod 777.
  
  
• Never add the same Bot name twice. If you do it accidentially, see the next tip.
  
  
• Deleting All Bots on your chat system, especially if you want to start over again is as simple as editing the appdata/bots.txt file and making it a blank or empty file, or upload an empty one. Make sure to chmod it to 777. Now you can start adding Bot Names again.
  
  
• FlashChat currently only supports 1 botid. You can have many bot names, but they are actually the same bot. With this in mind, starting 2 bots at the same time can cause erratic behavior.
  
  
• Bot Names and behavior settings are stored in /appdata/bots.txt. The Bot's data (Brains) is stored in the MySQL database.
  
  
• The _bots table should contain 1 Bot with a botid of 1 and a botname of "TestBot". This botname has nothing to do with the Bot Names that you add.
  
  
• The _bot table should have 26 entries containing personality information on the Bot. You may edit this with phpMyAdmin or phpFlashMyAdmin. Be advised that each time you re-populate the tables, this information returns to the defaults. You can edit the /bot/programe/aiml/startup.xml to change the default settings. Please use a good text editor Textpad.
  
  
• The _templates table will have around 23,000 entries in it, if you choose to install all AIML files.
  
  
• The _patterns table will have around 156,000 entries in it, if you choose to install all AIML files.
  
  
• The bot/programe/aiml folder must be chmod 777.
  
  
• If you're having problems and find yourself constantly re-populating the bot tables (very time consuming), you can remove all of the AIML files in the AIML folder except std-hello.aiml, re-populate the database tables with this 1 AIML file, then log into your chat and say "hello" to test the Bot. Once you've fixed the problem, you can put all the AIML files back and re-populate the tables again.
  
  
• I have created a script that makes reloading you bot tables much easier. It's called Bot Updater and it's free for you to use.