![Convos](http://convos.by/images/logo.png)

Convos is the simplest way to use IRC. It is always online, and accessible to
your web browser, both on desktop and mobile. Run in on your home server, or
cloud service easily. It can be deployed to Docker-based cloud services, or
you can just run it as a normal Mojolicious application, using any of the
Deployment Guides.

![Screenshot](http://convos.by/images/screenshot.png)

We got a [live demo](http://demo.convos.by) that is free to try.

## Features

#### Always online

The backend server will keep you logged in and logs all the activity in your
archive.

### Archive

All chats will be logged and indexed, which allow you to search in earlier
conversations.

### Avatars

The chat contains profile pictures which can be retrieved from Facebook or
from gravatar.com.  The avatar used when talking with Convos is lovingly
delivered by [Robohash.org](http://robohash.org/convos.by).

### Include external resources

Links to images and video will be displayed inline. No need to click on the
link to view the data.

## Installation

Convos requires a [Redis](http://redis.io/) server to function. If you are
deploying on OSX you can use [homebrew](http://brew.sh/), or if you are on
Ubuntu or similar install Redis using `apt-get install redis-server`. Note
that we require Redis 2.6+. If your distro version is too old, you can easily
build Redis from [source](http://redis.io/download).

To install convos we provide a simple script. All it requires in addition to
redis is a working build environment with make, Perl and a C compiler.
Copy/paste this to the command line:

    $ curl -L https://convos.by/install.sh | bash -

Then just follow the instructions. If you're worried about running a script
directly from a web server, just download it and inspect it before you run it.

It's also possible to run Convos from a checked out git repo:

    $ git clone https://github.com/Nordaaker/convos.git
    $ cd convos
    $ ./vendor/bin/carton install
    $ ./vendor/bin/carton exec script/convos daemon --listen http://*:8080

## Running convos in production

You can either run convos as a single process or a in a preforked environment.
The single process is the simplest to maintain, but preforked is perfect when
you need to scale.

    # Single process with embedded backend
    $ ./vendor/bin/carton exec script/convos daemon --listen http://*:8080

See also:

* [Running Convos](https://github.com/Nordaaker/convos/blob/master/lib/Convos/Manual/Running.pod)
  for more details on how to start Convos.
* [Environment variables](https://github.com/Nordaaker/convos/blob/master/lib/Convos/Manual/Environment.pod)
  for configuration
* [Mojolicious Guides](http://mojolicio.us/perldoc/Mojolicious/Guides/Cookbook#DEPLOYMENT)
  for production deployment.

For convenience, we include a Dockerfile so you can build a Docker image
easily if you want a custom config, or pull our image directly from the
[docker index](https://index.docker.io/u/nordaaker/convos/).

If you are interested in deploying Convos on Digital Ocean, you should follow
[this guide](http://thorsen.pm/perl/2014/03/02/convos-on-digitalocean.html).

Note: By default Convos will use the Mojo IOLoop, which is pure perl. In
production you might want to install [EV](https://metacpan.org/release/EV) -
we automatically use it if it is installed, and it performs much better.

## Upgrading Convos

To get the latest version of convos, you can run the install script above
again from the parent directory of your convos-release directory, and it will
download a newer version and overwrite your installation. Before you do this,
make sure to stop the running application, then start it again once you've
updated. Note that if we've changed the schema, Convos will ask you to upgrade
it before you can start the app. to do this, run

    $ ./script/convos upgrade

From the convos-release folder. This should automatically update your schema
to the latest version.

Note that if you downloaded convos using git, you should do `git pull` instead
of using the install script.

## Architecture principles

* Keep it easy to install
* Keep the JS simple and manageable
* Use Redis to manage state / publish subscribe
* Archive logs in plain text format, use ack to search them.

## Authors

Jan Henning Thorsen - jhthorsen@cpan.org
Marcus Ramberg - marcus@nordaaker.com

## Copyright & License

The [Robot images](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Nordaaker/convos/master/public/image/avatar-convos.png)
are delivered by
[Robohash.org](http://robohash.org/convos.by) under the CC-BY license.

Copyright (C) 2012-2014, Nordaaker.

This program is free software, you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the Artistic License version 2.0.