Every chat you find is routet through a server in the WWW. This means for me, it can be recorded. Here I want present you the following product: OpenFire. This product is completely free and open source software. You can download it on the homepage of ignite realtime. OpenFire is the name of the server and if you click on download you can have it for windows, mac or linux.

The client from ignite realtime is called Spark which is also available in a Web-Version, called SparkWeb. You have some plugins to add additional feautures. For example the IM Gateway plugin to add AOL, ICQ, IRC, MSN, Google Talk and other contacts. And the big advantage of this client, it’s encrypted.

Take a PC, call it a server and install the OpenFire Server on it. In the Software there’s a built-in database for a small amount of users. If you exceed 50 users or meet speed problems, you have to install a MySQL database. I just installed it on my pc with the built-in one. If you wanna use the SparkWeb Client, you also have to install an Apache Web Server and put the files of the web client in the correct folder. If you wanna be able to open the SparkWeb Client out of the Internet, be sure to direct the port 80 to the PC’s IP address.

The installation is very easy and the administration is done in a web interface. Many plugins bring you a lot of functions and security. It doesn’t cost a thing and if you are willing to try it out a little bit, enjoy it. It’s really a cool App.