This guide covers the housekeeping side of Easy Chat Room: automatic cleanup tasks, folder checks, the AJAX timing settings, and demo mode.
Scheduled cleanup tasks
Open the Maintenance screen. It lets you have Easy Chat Room automatically delete old data so your database does not grow forever.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Delete Guest Accounts After | Removes guest accounts that have been inactive for this many hours. |
| Delete Group Chats After | Deletes room messages older than this many hours. |
| Delete Private Chats After | Deletes private messages older than this many hours. |
Set any value to 0 to turn that cleanup off.
Setting the hours here is only half the job. Each task has a cron job URL shown beneath its field. For the cleanup to actually run, you must set up a scheduled job (a cron job) on your server, or a Joomla scheduled task, that visits each of those URLs regularly.
Setting up the cron jobs
- On the Maintenance screen, copy the cron job URL shown under each cleanup setting.
- In your hosting control panel (or Joomla's Scheduled Tasks), create a scheduled job that visits each URL — for example, once per hour.
- The cleanup then runs automatically on that schedule.
Folder permissions check
The Maintenance screen also shows a Folder Permissions table. It lists the folders Easy Chat Room needs to write to (for uploads and cache) and whether each one is Writable.
If any folder shows as not writable or missing, fix its permissions on the server — uploads and other features will fail until every folder is writable.
AJAX timing settings
Open Settings → AJAX Frequency. These control how often the chat checks the server for updates. All values are in seconds.
| Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
| New Chat Receive Seconds | How often the chat checks for new messages. |
| User List Update Seconds | How often the user list refreshes. |
| Chat Status Update Seconds | How often message statuses refresh. |
| User Online Status Update Seconds | How often online/offline status refreshes. |
| User Typing Status Update Seconds | How often the "typing…" indicator refreshes. |
Lower numbers make the chat feel more "live" but put more load on your server. Raise them if your server is busy; the defaults are a sensible balance.
Demo mode
Demo mode makes the whole admin area read-only for everyone except super administrators, and shows a warning banner. It is meant for public demo sites, so visitors can look around without changing or deleting anything.
- Go to Settings → General.
- In the Demo Mode card, switch Demo Mode on.
- Click that card's Update button.
While demo mode is on, attempts to save, update, or delete are blocked for non-super-admin users.
Remember to turn demo mode off on a real, working site — while it is on, your other administrators cannot make changes.