Dead Simple Chat Blog

How to embed ChatGPT in your website

Dead Simple Chat Team — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 22:46:39 GMT

In this article we are going to learn how you can embed chatGPT in your website.

First thing to note: ChatGPT does not provide a embeddable version that you can easily embed in your website. Therefore you need a third party chat interface and ChatGPT API to be able to embed chatGPT on your website

In this article we are going to use the DeadSimpleChat and the ChatGPT API to embed the chatGPT chat box in your website

Pre-requisites

DeadSimpleChat Account: You can create a free DeadSimpleChat account by going to the website and click on the "get started" Button: DeadSimpleChat
OpenAI ChatGPT API Key: Get the chatgpt key from its website
Basic web development: For handling ChatGPT AI requests on a serverless function.

Setting Up the DeadSimpleChat environment

Create a DeadSimpleChat Chat room

Go to DeadSimpleChat.com and click on the "Start a free trial" button to create a free account with DeadSimpleChat

then

Once you have created an account you land up in the dashboard there click on the create chat room button, from there fill out the form and then go to the embed info
You can optionally do the settings to make the chat room look perfect

DeadSimpleChat Dashboard

Embed code

Creating a Chat Bot with DeadSimpleChat

now that you have created a chat room, it is time to create a chat bot that will work in that chat room

On the dashboard click on the chat bots in the sidebar like so

DeadSimpleChat chatbot

you will land up in the chat bot section. You can create the chatbot using REST API as well but for ease of use we will be creating the chatbot using UI based system

create Chat bot section of DeadSimpleChat

Here fill out the form to create a chat bot including name an description of the chat bot,

you can configure here

Name: Name of your chatbot
Description: An optional description that you can give to your chatbot
Bot Image: The image of the bot that will be shown in the chat room
Metadata: You can use the meta data to send the AI prompt along with any other information that you want to sent to the ChatGPT API
Webhook URL: A web hook with http POST request will be sent to the URL whenever the bit is called
Bot Enabled: You want the bot to be enabled or not
Bot Allowed in all chat rooms: You want the bot in all the chat rooms or specific chatrooms only
Bot allowed in chat rooms: Which of the chat rooms the bot is allowed in
Bot NOT allowed in chat rooms: Which of the chat rooms the bot is not allowed in
Message history limit: When the bot Webhooks is triggered, how many historical messages you want to receive in the webhook. This is quite useful if you are using AI like GPT-4 to send history to the AI model to establish context for the question.
Bot trigger: Controls what triggers the bot. When the bot is triggered a Webhook is sent to the specified WebhookURL.
Message:Any new message is sent in the chat room will trigger the bot. This is useful in cases where you want to build 1-1 chat with User and Bot.
Mention:The bot is triggered when it is mentioned by name e.g @botname. Useful in cases where you want the bot as a helper in group chat.
Bot Message visibility: Controls the visibility of the message sent by the bot. Wether the message is visible to everyone or just the person who ask the question to the bot.This is especially useful in Group Chats, here you can control wether the bot reply is shown to everyone or just the user who ask the question to the bot.
Public: Any question asked to the bot, and the bot's reply will be visible to everyone in the group chat.
Private: The question posed to the bot, along with the bot's response, will only be visible to the user who initiated the interaction with the bot.

Configuring a ChatGPT bot in DeadSimpleChat

Endpoint:

Base URL: https://api/openai.com/v1/chat/completions
this is the endpoint for sending the prompt messages to the chatgpt model and recieving back the responses

Basic Parameters

model:

Specifies the ChatGPT model to use from gpt 3.5 turbo or the gpt-4

2. messages

An array of messages that represents the conversation
Each message has a role (systeom user or assistant) and it also has a content that is the actual text of the message
For a question and answer flow, you can send one user message at a time and then get the reply back. And for more context aware conversations , you can include some previous conversations of both the user messages and replies and also include a system level instruction

3. temprature

A value of 0 and 2 is the temperature that controls the degree of randomness in the output
Higher values that are closer to 2 will result in more creative and random responses, while lower values that are closer to 0 will result in more deterministic or predictable results.
here is an example request body

{
  "model": "gpt-3.5-turbo",
  "messages": [
    {"role": "user", "content": "Hello, how can I integrate ChatGPT with DeadSimpleChat?"}
  ],
  "temperature": 0.7
}

Webhook Processing

How DeadSimpleChat sends data to your webhook

Trigger: your bot is triggered in DeadSimpleChat, you can trigger it by mention, new message or an action press button
Webhook POST: DeadSimpleChat will send a POST request to the Webhook URL that you have configured
Request Body: The request includes JSON playload

User Info
Chat Room Info
Bot Info
Message
triggeredBy
messageHistory

Sample JSON Payload

{
  "user": {
    "_id": "648e211a81cea20bd8b1581d",
    "username": "admin"
  },
  "chatRoom": {
    "_id": "653f9e50ed0f012c972936fa",
    "roomId": "apQRt7tRn",
    "name": "chat Room chatgpt test"
  },
  "messageHistory": [],
  "bot": {
    "_id": "653ee8f7ed0f012c972936cc",
    "name": "dadbot2",
    "metadata": "I am a super dad bot",
    "description": "Replies with a Dad Joke"
  },
  "message": {
    "_id": "653f9fa2ed0f012c97293724",
    "message": "tell me a joke @dadbot2"
  },
  "triggeredBy": "mention"
}

sample JSON Payload sent to DeadSimpleChat

3. Bot Response Logic

Recieving the User's message

Parse Incoming JSON: Extract relevant fields like message text and chat roomId and botId etc
Construct a Chat GPT prompt

you can transform the user's message into a chat gpt prompt
You need a more context based conversation then you have the option of sending an array of messages that includes historical user and bot interactions. You can do this in the UI based section Message history limit

Calling the ChatGPT API

Create the request

Authorization: add the your Open AI API key in the Authorization: Bearer header
Content-tyoe: application/json for the request body

2. Streaming Responses or Single Response

Streaming: You can request the streaming responses by setting stream:true and get the partial replies in real time. These are typically more complex to handle but can provide immidiate user gratification
Single Response: Make a request and get the entire output once. Easy to implement but users have to wait for all the answers to come.

3. Extract the response

The API will return a choices array, this array will have a message object with content and role
You can further format it before sending it to DeadSimpleChat

Example Response

{
  "id": "chatcmpl-...",
  "object": "chat.completion",
  "created": 1234567890,
  "model": "gpt-3.5-turbo",
  "choices": [
    {
      "message": {
        "role": "assistant",
        "content": "Sure! Here's how you can integrate ChatGPT with DeadSimpleChat..."
      }
    }
  ],
  "usage": {
    "prompt_tokens": 10,
    "completion_tokens": 30,
    "total_tokens": 40
  }
}

Formatting the text or media for the user

text based response: you can grab the content from choices[0].message.content
Media/Images: When using advanced AI features or combining the ChatGPT with other AI services, you can generate the image URLs or attachments and include them in your responses
Buttons/Actions: Deadsimplechat also supports action buttons. If you the users to click on a button then you can also program the API to be called when the button is pressed

Sending a message back to DeadSimpleChat

Using the DeadSimpleChat Bot API

Endpoint

POST https://api.deadsimplechat.com/consumer/api/v2/bot/{BOT_ID}/chatroom/{ROOM_ID}/message?auth={SECRET_KEY}

BOT_ID: This is the identifier for the bot example : 234uhjkgheut9495jf
Room_ID: the chat room Id where you want the message to appear
Secret_Key: A key that you get from the DeadSimpleChat developer portal

2. Request body:

{
  "message": "The response form the AI chat bot is"
}

You can include attachments or action buttons if needed
You can add an action button like for example

{
  "message": "Your AI response here",
  "buttons": [
    {
      "text": "Click Me",
      "value": "some_value"
    }
  ]
}

When the user clicks on the action button the DeadSimpleChat triggers another webhook with an actionbuttonpressed event.

Ensuring that the secret_key is secure

Environment variables: Store the SECRET_KEY in env variables rather than hardcoding them in your code
Server Side only: Do not expose the keys on the front end side or in publicly accesible configuration files
Access Controls: Limit who can view or modify the environment varibale if you are part of a large team of developers

Overview of the process

DeadSimpleChat trigger

A user sends the message to the bot

2. Webhook send to your backend

DeadSimpleChat sends the users message along with the context to the https://YOUR_BACKEND_URL/bot/webhook.

3. Processing at your backend

Here you extract the user's message and send it to chat gpt api including the context that was recieved from the user. Call the API and wait for the response

4. Sending response back to DeadSimpleChat

Once you get the response from the ChatGPT you send it back to DeadSimpleChat

5. User sees AI response

Lastly the DeadSimpleChat shows the response to the user.

Sample Backend with ChatGPT and AWS Serverless

Here what we are going to do in this tutorial

Receive a DeadSimpleChat webhook when the bot is triggered
Process the user's message and forward it ti ChatGPT
Send the generated AI text back to the DeadSimpleCHat via the BOT API

Overview of the Architecture

AWS API Gateway: This exposes a public HTTPS endpoint for example: https://xyz.execute-api.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/dev/chatbot/webhook
AWS Lambda: Hanels the incoming POST request from DeadSimpleChat and calls the CHATGPT API and returns the response.
DeadSimpleChat:

When the bot is triggered by mention, sending a message or button click, it sends a POST request to the API gateway endpoint

The Lambada function process processes it and sends the reply back to the chat room using hte DeadSimpleChat Bot API

Serverless framework Setup

You will need the serverless framework isntalled globally here

npm install -g serverless

Then you create a new project

serverless create --template aws-nodejs --path dsc-chatgpt-bot

This code will generate a basic folder structure with serverless.yml and a handler.js file

Example `serverless.yml`

Here is a minial serverless.yml file that has

An aws region and runtime
A single function (`chatBotWebhook`) that is mapped to an POST endpoint chatbot.webhoook

service: dsc-chatgpt-bot

provider:
  name: aws
  runtime: nodejs18.x
  region: us-east-1
  stage: dev
  environment:
    # These environment variables store your secrets securely.
    OPENAI_API_KEY: ${env:OPENAI_API_KEY}
    DSC_SECRET_KEY: ${env:DSC_SECRET_KEY}

functions:
  chatBotWebhook:
    handler: handler.bot
    events:
      - http:
          path: chatbot/webhook
          method: post
          cors: true

The environment variables will be injected at runtime. If you do not want to use the environment variable for any reason you can hard code the keys as well.

Lambda Handler Code

Here we are creating the handler.js file with the following code

// handler.js
const fetch = require('node-fetch'); // or "cross-fetch"

module.exports.bot = async (event, context) => {
  try {
    // 1. Parsing the incoming req that is coming from DeadSimpleChat
    const body = JSON.parse(event.body);

    // 2. Extracting the necessary information (chatRoom ID, bot ID, user message)
    const userMessage = body.message?.message || ""; // The text that triggered the bot
    const roomId = body.chatRoom?.roomId;
    const botId = body.bot?._id;

    // 3. Building the request for the OpenAI ChatGPT API
    const openaiResponse = await fetch("https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions", {
      method: "POST",
      headers: {
        "Content-Type": "application/json",
        "Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.OPENAI_API_KEY}`
      },
      body: JSON.stringify({
        model: "gpt-3.5-turbo",
        messages: [
          { role: "user", content: userMessage }
        ],
        temperature: 0.7 // Adjust for more or less creativity
      })
    });

    const openaiData = await openaiResponse.json();

    // Handling potential error that might happen from ChatGPT
    if (openaiData.error) {
      console.error("OpenAI Error:", openaiData.error);
      throw new Error(openaiData.error.message);
    }

    // Extracting the AI-generated reply
    const aiReply = openaiData.choices?.[0]?.message?.content || "I'm sorry, I had trouble understanding that.";

    // 4. Send the bot response back to DeadSimpleChat
    // here is  the Bot API URL
    const dscUrl = `https://api.deadsimplechat.com/consumer/api/v2/bot/${botId}/chatroom/${roomId}/message?auth=${process.env.DSC_SECRET_KEY}`;

    const dscResponse = await fetch(dscUrl, {
      method: "POST",
      headers: {
        "Content-Type": "application/json"
      },
      body: JSON.stringify({ message: aiReply })
    });

    const dscData = await dscResponse.json();

    //  log the response from DeadSimpleChat here
    console.log("DeadSimpleChat Response:", dscData);

    // 5. Return a success status to DeadSimpleChat
    return {
      statusCode: 200,
      body: JSON.stringify({
        success: true,
        message: "Message was sent to DeadSimpleChat successfully."
      })
    };

  } catch (error) {
    console.error("Error happened in Lambda:", error);

    // Return an error response here
    return {
      statusCode: 500,
      body: JSON.stringify({
        success: false,
        error: error.message
      })
    };
  }
};

handler.js

Explanation of Key steps

Parsing the webhook

The event.body contains the JSON payload that comes form DeadSimpleChat. Here we convert that payload into JavaScript Object in order to extract the user's message, the chatroom ID and the Bit ID

2. ChatGPT API Ca;;

We send the request to https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions endpoint with our OpenAI Key
Pass the model, message and the optional parameteres like temprature
We steore the response in openaiData

3. Creating the Bot reply

We extract the text that the ChatGPT model created from choices[0].message.content that we get back from the chatgpt API response

4. Posting back to DeadSimpleChat

We send a POST request to the DeadSimpleChat Bot API endpoint, including the DeadSimpleChat SECRET_KEY in the query string
In the req.body include the AI reply that you just got back from the chatGPT under the message field

5. Return the Response

DeadSimpleChat expects a JSON response, that is {success: true} if everything is well
If there is an error, we log it and return the 500 error codfe

Deploying to AWS

Setting env cariables

In your local .env file you can specify

export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-123yourKey
export DSC_SECRET_KEY=abc123DeadSimpleChatKey

These will be put in your lambda function by the serverless at the deploy time.

2. Deploy the Serverless

cd dsc-chatgpt-bot
serverless deploy

3. Check Output

After the deployment, the API gateway endpoint in the terminal
It should look like https://.execute-api.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/dev/chatbot/webhook

Configuring DeadSImpleChat

Create the Bot

The DeadSimpleChat dashboard, you can go to Chat bot then create a new bot

2. Set webhook url

In the bot settings, you can set the Webhook URL to your deployed API gateway endpoint

https://.execute-api.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/dev/chatbot/webhook

3. Save the bot configuration.

Testing the Setup

Open the chat room where the bot is deployed
Trigger the bot by sending a message in the chat room
Observe the Lambda logs in the AWS console to get the real time debugging information
Check response in the DeadSimpleChat chat room from the bot that was generated by the ChatGPT API

Additional considerations

Error handling: Make sure you handle the timeouts gracefully
Rate limits: ChatGPT has rate limits, be sure to handle that
Security
Never expose the ChatGPT or DeadSimpleChat keys on the front end
Ensure that the Lambda roles permissions are kept minimal
Action Buttons: If you want more interactive elements in your chat room. You can include the buttons in the response body to the DeadSimpleChat. This will send another webhook to a URL that you specify, when the user clicks on the button.

This is it. I hope you liked the article.

27 Best Virtual Event Engagement ideas [2025]| Strategies, Tools and Insights

Dead Simple Chat Team — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 20:22:19 GMT

Virtual event engagement is an important factor that determines whether your attendees are actively involved in your virtual event, they interact with your content and leave with a positive experience

In this section, we are going to explore what virtual event engagement really means, why it directly impacts your attendee satisfaction and ROI.

What is Virtual Event Engagement?

Virtual event engagement is the level of interaction and active participation of attendees during an online event.

Attendees instead of just logging in and passively watching presentations, they take part in various interactive elements such as live polls, Q&A sessions, chat discussions, networking breakouts and/ or gamified challenges.

The ultimate goal here is to replicate or even surpass the sense of connection and community that is typically experienced at in person events, this makes sure that every participant feels valued and involved.

Why Virtual Event Engagement matters.

Stronger Retention: When attendees are engaged, they stay for a longer time in the event and absorb a lot more information.
Higher Satisfaction: Active participation of audiences leads to more memorable and positive event experience
Actionable Insights: Real time engagement metrics help event organizers refine their strategies and improve ROI to stakeholders

Passive vs Active engagement strategies

What is the Difference between passive attendance and Active participation

Passive Attendance

This occurs when attendees tune in to the live stream but do not interact in any way.

These attendees might watch the keynote but rarely use any chat functions, participate in polls or any networking tools.

The passive attendance often results in

Lower retention of what happend during the event
Higher Dropout rates
Missed opportunities for networking or brand management

Active participation

The Active participation involves contributing to the event, that is asking questions, sharing insights and taking part in polls and gamified challenges

Active participants

Feel more satisfied with the event experience
Connect more with peers and speakers
Provide valuable feedback to other attendees

Engagement is the divivding line between a mere viewer and an active contributor.

Moving attendees from passive watchers to active participants is important for achieving event goals, these could be knowledge sharing, lead generation, community building and brand enhancement

Key Engagement metrics to consider

Poll Participation:

The percentage of attendees that are responding to live polls, quizzes or surveys.

Polls offer real time insights into the opinion of attendees and their knowledge about the topic, thus encoraging interactive learning

Chat interaction

What it is: The number of messages and conversations that are there in the event's chat

Why it matters: High number of chat messages means good attendee participation, fostering a sense of community and can reveal common questions or pain points.

Q&A Activity:

What it is: The quantity of questions that are being asked during the Q&A sessions to experts and organizers.

Why it matters: This is a two-way communication into the event, giving speakers the opportunity to directly respond to audiences and creating a feedback loop.

Gamification Update

What it is: The number of audiences that are participating in scavenger hunts, leaderboards, and other playful competitions

Gamification is fun and motivating, increasing the attendee dwell time and helping organizers collect additional data about the event.

The Psychology Behind Engagement

Social Proof

Social proof is the phenomenon where people look to others’ reactions in order to determine what to do.

When attendees are participating a lot in the chat discussions and there are excited social media posts and numerous poll responses, non-participating attendees feel compelled to respond in the chat

How you can apply in your event

Display live participant count in chat or polls
Show chat highlights in real time to other audiences
Encourage early chatters and people interacting with the event to share their experiences

Reciprocity:

Reciprocity is the instinctive human tendency to give back or return a favour. When experts or speakers offer valuable content such as free resources or personalized advice, the attendees feel a need to give back. ‌

Pre event engagement strategies

Pre-Event Engagement Strategies for Virtual Event Engagement

A. Crafting a multichannel marketing campaign

A marketing push across multiple channels is important to get your audiences excited and informed well before the event starts

By spreading messaging across all the platforms that your audiences visit, you create a sense of excitement and establish momentum early on (these platforms include social media, email, and industry forums).

Hashtag creation

Develop a unique hashtag for your event that your attenddes, speakers and partners can share (eg VirtualEvent2025) and discuss about your event.

This centralizes the conversations about your event and makes it easier to track engagement, like how many shares etc

Teaser videos

You can create short clips with keynote speakers, sponsors, and behind-the-scenes content. Teachers spark curiosity and help potential attendees visualize the experience they can expect at the event.

Speaker takeovers

You can invite high profile speakers that are going to be at your event to take over your social media profile for a few days. They can post stories, polls and get the potential audiences excited for the event.

2. Email Automation

Segmenting your audiences

Create seperate emails and segmate your audiences by rile , industry or past attendance at the event. Tailored messaging feels more relevant and boosts open rate for emails.

Creating Drip Sequences

For emails, it is important to remind the audience again and again. You can create a drip campaign that introduces keynote speakers, reminds attendees of upcoming deadlines, and includes helpful tidbits about the event.

Personalization of Emails

Use dynamic fields to insert attendee details like name and position or specific recommendations. Personalized emails see higher click-through rates and registration conversion rates.

B. Exclusive Pre-Event Content

Offering something valuable before the event drives early engagement and positions your brand as a valuable resource.

Attendees who gain valuable insights and perks beforehand are more likely to remain enthusiastic and committed.

1. Webinars, sneak peak with keynote speakers and behind the scene tours

Topic focused webinars:

Host free sessions on niche topics that are related to your main event. This offers immediate value and teases the depth of content that the audiences will get at the event.

Speakers interviews

A small 10-15 min livestream with speakers or a recorded intereview that allows attendees to 'meet' the speaker, fostering a personal connection and eagerness to see the event

Backstage pass

Share short videos and photos from virtual "production rehearsals" or previews of the platform’s unique features. This builds excitement around the event format and what is going to happen at the event.

2. VIP sessions and Early bird Q&A

Exclusive access

You can reward the early bird entrants or VIP pass holders with a special Q&A panel that has high-profile speakers and event sponsors. This gives an immediate sense of privilege and exclusivity.

Limited capacity

Cap the number od attendees to create FOMO and urgency, thus accelerating signups

C. Interactive Pre event challenges

Challenges and competitions often help attendees engage with your eventr and content beforehand . This fosters a sense of community among attendees and sets an energetic tone and can also create valuable user generated content.

Hashtag contests and Content Submissions:

You can ask attendee to create unique hashtags for your event , offer incentives or rewards for the most creative posts

Encourage attendees to tag your brand on social media helping you reach thier networks and boosting overall event awareness

Choosing the Right Virtual Event Chat Platform

DeadSimpleChatr

Need Event Chat for your website or app

DeadSimpleChat is an Chat provider

Add Scalable Chat to your app in minutes
10 Million Online Concurrent users
99.999% Uptime and 100% guaranteed Uptime durring events
Moderation features
1-1 Chat
Group Chat
Polls
Q&A Sessions
Fully Customizable
Chat API and SDK
Pre-Built Chat

During Event Engagement Strategies for Virtual Event Engagement

a. Virtual Networking

One of the biggest challenges in virtual events is replicating the interactions and connections that people experience in in-person events.

You can offer networking lounges and gamified matchmaking to encourage connections that feel organic and fun

Virtual Lounges:

You can create topics specific lounges or rooms where attendees that have a shared interest can join to discuss and chat.

This mimics informal coffee break conversations at physical conferences.

Speed Networking

You can group attendees in short timed video calls that simultaet quick introductions often seen at live events. This approch maximises the number of connections formed

Breakout sessions:

Smaller, and focused sessions theat help attendees deep dive into topics they are most interested about. These are more interactive sessions than the mainstage presentations with small group of audience an expert, which encourages higher engagement and more in depth discussions.

b. Interactive Content Elements

Engaging content converts the passive viewers into active participants in the event. Active participants make the event feel dynamic, thus engaging content not only maintains attention but also deepens the learning and encourages knowledge sharing

1. Live Polls, Q&A and Surveys

Two way communication

Rather than have a one sided presentation, having a chat besides your presentation converts it into a two way affair with attendees participating live and thus having a sense of involvement and community

Instant feedback

With chat you get instant feedback as what the direction your event is going, more chat messages and participants mean that the event is engaging

Higher retention

Research shows that the more the audience are engaged the more they are like to be watch the event till completion and recommend the event to others.

2. Gamification, Points, Rewards and leaderboards

Interactive challenges

You can introduce quizzes and puzzle solving elements to sessions, and reward correct answers with points or tokens

Recognition

Leaderboards can highlight "top questions asked" and then these questions can be answered by experts.

Thus people get a sense of achievement that their question was answered by the expert

3. Expo Booths

Interactive Product Demo

Attendees can view demo videos and click through the product galleries and also interact with representatives through video calls and live chat

1-1 chat with exhibitors

The attendees can have a 1-1 chat with exhibitors who are there to inquire more about the product its features etc

Sponsorship opportunities

Virtual booths offer valuable digital space for sponsors who can showcase their offering in visually appealing and interactive digital space

c.Hybrid Engagement

When conducting hybrid events the in-person and the online audiences both must equally feel engaged.

Hybrid events require careful planning in order not to alienate either in-person or online audiences.

d.Creative Engagement Breaks

Attention spans starts to go down as time passes, this is important in long virtual events. Entertainment breaks energize attendees, prevent fatigue and maintain excitement between key sessions.

1. Live music, Comic Interludes and Interactive trivia

Variety of Options:

You can have a short musical performance, or a stand up comedy, or have a quick interactive trivia game.

Short and engaging

try to keep the sessions short and engagning about 10-20 minus is the ideal time. This is so that the entertainment section should not overshadow the main event.

Create Buzz: Ask attendees to share photos and short video clips of themselves enjoying the event, also give them sharable short clips from the entertainment section or the event to create an ongoing buzz
Community Building: Real time sharing creates a sense of togetherbess and allows online and inperson attendees to connect through comments and likes
Event Branding: A dedicated event hashtaf can trend locally and if

Post Event Strategies for Virtual Event Engagement

After the event is over, you need a follow up sequesne in order to create sustained brand engagement taking the post event excitement into consideration

It also takes a professional tone, that you care about attendee feedback, learning outcomes and continued relationship building

a. Follow-up and Thank you Messages

Personalized Email with Session Highlights and Relevant resources

Tailored Emails:

Create emails with attendee names and include a curated list of resources and takeaways from the event. This makes the attendees feel special and revisit session materials.

Immediate Gratification:

Sending the email within 24-48 hours of the event capitalizes on the fresh enthusiasm of the attendees, thus increasing the likelihood of click-through and further engagement.

Share Session recordings for On demand Viewing

Catch Up opportunities

Provide recording for those who have missed the main event and want to view it.

Extended Reach:

Make select sessions and clips publicly available, this can attract new prospects who might be interested in future events

b. Extended Community building

The virtual event should not be a one-off experience. Create an ongoing community to help your brand stay on top of mind and allow attendees to keep networking and sharing knowledge beyond event dates and into next year’s event, perhaps.

1. Launch a dedicated group on LinkedIn or Facebook to continue discussions

Seamless transition: Direct attendees to already created groups on Facebook or linkedIn and encourage them to join the groups and discuss converstions started during the event
Moderator Involvement: Seed the grouip with event moderators and new post event content, answer questions and maintain engagement.

2. Encourage User generated content: Blog Post, Testimonial and Success stories

Incentivized Contributions:

Offer small rewards for participants to share their testimonials and success stories that are inspired by the event

Peer-to-Peer recognition:

You can also highlight user-generated content and make attendee contributors feel appreciated for showcasing the impact they are having on a broader audience.

c. Measuring Success with Engagement KPIs

Tacking the key performance indicators or KPIs lets you know what works and what does not work, thus enables data driven improvements

1. Chat participation rates,Poll responses and Live Q&A Interactions

Quantitative engagement

How many people respond in chat, how many messages were sent. A higher than expected rate suggests strong attendee engagement

Benchmarking

Compare the event engagement metrics with previous event to measure improvement and set goals for the next event.

2. Compare Pre and Post Event metrics to measure improvement

Attendance vs Engagement:

A large number of attendee is encouraging but post event data can reveal the actual participation rates which is more important in measuring success

Conversion Rates

You can look at how many leads converted to customers and how many attendees took action after the event. You can use these metrics to measure success.

What is Chat Moderation? & Why is Chat Moderation Important?

Dead Simple Chat Team — Sun, 26 Jan 2025 17:26:52 GMT

In this article we are going to learn about chat moderation and why is it important. Let us first learn what really is chat moderation

Definition of Chat Moderation

Chat Moderation refers to the processes and tools that are used to oversee and manage live discussions that are done on web and digital platforms in order to create a safe and inclusive environment for all chat participants.

This includes web messaging and messaging apps, social media channels, live streaming platform, online forums and even gaming communities

Moderation encompasses all user generated content this could include text messages, images, audio messages and even video content that is sent in teh chat.

To quickly repharse for better understanding

Chat Moderation

Chat moderation refers to overseeing real time and near real time conversations that are happing on communities, virtual events and digital platforms or streaming channels to make sure that they adhere to rules and guidelines.

Objective:

To create a respectful and engaging environment by preventing harm, abuse, spam and illegal content and be in line with the community or company guidelines.

Roles of a Chat Moderator

Who is a Chat Moderator?

Role and Skill sets:

A chat moderator is reponsable for maintaining healthy interactions in online communities. They need strong communication abilities, empathy technical know how on how to spot community violations and act swiftly

Types of Moderators

Volunteer Moderators:

Volunteer moderators are passionate community members who help be ause they care about the platform and want to provide a service to the community

Hired Professionals:

Hired professionals are paid staff with formal training and professional standards

Community Managers:

Community managers are often responsible for broader engagement strategies in addition to moderation tasks.

What do Chat Moderators do?

Monitoring Chat Activity:

Chat moderators keep an eye on the discussions that are happining in the chat rooms and they flag and remove harmful content and sometimes ban users that break the rules.

Resolving Disputes and Enforcing guidelines

Moderators mediate conflicts that can come up between members and make sure that everyone follows community guidelines

Collecting Feedback:

They gather user input and identify repetitive issues and relay suggestions to improve the moderation processes and policies over time.

💡

New to DeadSimpleChat? It's a turn key chat that you can easily add to your website or App —without any complicated code. For Virtual / Live events, SaaS App, Social Platform, Education, Gaming, Finance Sign Up for Free

Why is Chat Moderation Important

Chat Moderation is not just about stopping bad behaviour. It is an important part of building communities, mitigating risk and enabling long term platform success.

The rapid rise of online chat through gaming, social media, virutal events, communities and corporate messaging, moderation is needed to ensure that conversations remain safe, constructive and aligned with legal and ethical standards

Ensuring User safety and brand safety

Preventing Abuse and Harmful user interactions

Harassment and bullying:

Without moderation, a small number of distruptive users can dominate the conversations stubbing out everyone else.

These users can harm the sense of security and belonging that everyone in the community feels.

Preserving Brand reputation in Public and Private Chats

Public Perception:

When negative and offensice content is there on your platform, it can quickly become a public relations nightmare, damaging people trust in your platform.

Private and semi-private communities can also leak harmful content externally if left unmanaged

Positive community image

Active Moderation signals a brand's commitment to user well being. This commitment fosters goodwill and loyalty amoung users.

These users feel respected and protected and are then highly likely to recommend your community or platform to others

Building Healthy Digital communities and mitigating legal risks

Community health: By removing toxic content early, moderators can keep the discussions in the chat healthy and make sure that newcomers.
Legal and Regulatory Compliance: Certain regions have strict rules regarding some content. Platforms that do not comply with these rules could face penalties. Thus to be in line with the legal and regulatory compliance you need chat moderation

Improving user retention and community health

Positive environment encourages user engagement and loyalty

Creating a welcoming atmosphere:

When users feel confident that they will not be subjected to spam and any sort of harassment, they are more likely to participate in conversations, form friendships and spend more time together

User Loyalty

Platforms that have safer communites see low churn, a well moderated environment fosters long term loyalty, allowing users to build deeper connections and becoming ambassadors of the platform.

Better monetization opportunites and transaction safety

Safe transactions:

In e-marketplaces and online platforms where there is an element of social buying, chat moderation helps prevent scams, fraud and unscrupulous behaviour.

This build trust and gives the confidance to users to make purchase of good in the e-store.

Attracting advertisers:

Brands have a willingness to advertise in communities and online websites which best reflect their own values.

A well moderated chat reduces the risk of brand association with harmful content, making your platform more appealing to advertisers and sponsors.

DeadSimpleChat.com

Embed Online Group Chat platform for websites

DeadSimpleChat.com

What Content requires Moderation?

Modern chat platforms have a variety of types of content, from text to images and video and audio, these all types of content are subject to misuse and harm. A good moderation strategy must take into account the specific challenges of each format and make sure that the chat remains safe respectful and complaint with company or community guidelines.

Text based Messages

Offensive language:

This includes profanity, slurs and other langugage that users find bad. These messages should be deleted and not be allowed in the chat platform

Spam and misinformation:

Spamming and advertise other products and services in the chat platform degarde users experience and distract from meaningful discussions

Best practices for real time scanning and filtering

Using DeadSimpleChat Platform
Automated filters: In platforms such as DeadSimpleChat you can enbale automatic moderation that does not allow explicit images to be uploaded to the chat room
Manual filters: In DeadSimpleChat you can also create moderators that can delete chat messages and also ban unruly users from the chat rooms

Images, Gif and Memes

Removing explicit images: In DeadSimpleChat the A.I based automated moderation tools stops users form uploading explicit images to the chat room
Using AI tools: DeadSimpleChat has A.I based tools that help with moderation of chat along with moderators.

DeadSimpleChat.com

Embed Online Group Chat platform for websites

DeadSimpleChat.com

Manual vs Automated Moderation

Common Moderation Techniques

Manual Vs Automated Moderation

Manual Moderation

Advantages

Human Empathy: Real people can better interpret tone, context and nuances of the language and can offer more compassionate decision making than A.I based algorithm can.
Nuanced judgement: Certain topics such as satire, humor or coded language require understanding subtle clues making it a more diffcult task for automated A.I moderation tools.
More context aware: A human moderator can have a broader view of the conversation and user behaviour before taking any action, this reduces the likelihood of inappropriately removing genuine content

Disadvantages

Resource Intensive: It can be expensive to have human moderators to cover the chat activity.
Time Consuming: During large event you require a lot of moderators to review and approve or remove the content
Potential for Human Error: Moderators sometimes could be baised or be in an emotional state or have a misunderstanding this could lead to inconsistent enforcement of guidelines

Automated Moderation

Advantages

Scalability: Automated moderation with the help of A.I can quickly process large amount of chat messages, this makes them a good choice for chat platforms that have a high user volume data.
Speed and cost effectiveness: Automated moderation systems that are assisted with A.I can flag inappropriate content fast and in large events with thousands of online users are sending messages in the chat room, it reduces the requirement of human moderation teams.

Period of Moderation

Pre Moderation:

Here all the user generated content like messages etc are held for a moderator review, and once approved only then it is sent in the chat room. This is done when you enable Q&A mode in the DeadSimpleChat

Here moderators can approve or reject the messages based on their company rules.

Ideal Scenarios: This is predominantly used when you have a smaller community, or if you have sensitive topics of discussions and you do not want any bad content to appear in the chat even for a small amount of time.

Pros and Cons: The benefit here is that only approved content appears in the chat room, but on the downside it slows down the flow of conversations and increases moderator workload.

Post Moderation

Here content is immediatly published in the chat room, but moderators review it in real time and if they find any bad content they can quickly remove it from the chat

Ideal Scenario: larger event and fast paced communities where lots of messages are comming in the chat in real time.

Pros and Cons: This has more user engagement as there is not a delay between when the message is send and when it appears in the chat room after approval from modferators. But cons here is that some content might escapse the moderators eye and be in the chat room longer than it should be.

Moderation based on Community Guidelines

Reactive Moderation

Moderators respond to reports that are raised by users themselves, this relies on the community itself to raise awareness for the content in question and take action if needed.

Today social media platforms are relying on these methods.

Advantages:

This depends on community involvement, thus reducing the load on moderators and thus requires fewer moderators

Drawbacks:

Content remain visible for a lot more time, that is until and unless specific content is flagged and reported that content remains online. This could impact user experience as well as brand reputation.

Proactive Moderation:

Platforms have moderators with specific training on company guidelines and policies. these moderators constantly review content that is comming up in the community chat and proactively remove bad content

Advantages:

Much quicker than as compared to reactive content mangement. The community feels like a much safer place and bad content is removed fast. This improves brand reputation and user experience.

Disadvantages:

Costly to implement as you need to hire paid moderators or assign community members to be volunteer moderators and provide them training and guidance on company policy

DeadSimpleChat

Need Event Chat for your website or app

DeadSimpleChat is an Chat provider

Add Scalable Chat to your app in minutes
10 Million Online Concurrent users
99.999% Uptime and 100% guaranteed Uptime durring events
Moderation features
1-1 Chat
Group Chat
Polls
Q&A Sessions
Fully Customizable
Chat API and SDK
Pre-Built Chat

7 Best Event Chat Platforms for 2025

Dead Simple Chat Team — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 16:23:33 GMT

In this article we are going to consider the best chat platforms for your event.

These chat platforms are vital for attendee engagement and networking opportunities.

You are hosting a small meetup or a huge hybrid conference, the right chat solution can make your event awesome

Here is the list of chat platforms that you can consider

DeadSimpleChat
Facebook Chat
GroupMe
Google Chat
Microsoft Teams
YouTube Chat
Discord

DeadSimpleChat

1. DeadSimpleChat

DeadSimpleChat is one of the best chat platforms out there. It is perfect for large scale virtual conferences, corporate events and organizations that need quick yet fully customizable chat solution

Here are some of the features of DeadSimpleChat

Unmatched Scalability and Reliability:

With 100% Uptime Guarantee during events and scalability upto 10 Million online concurrent users.

You can rest assured that your event will be smooth and sucessful

Ease of Integration:

DeadSimpleChat is very easy to setup and integrate in your website or app. Everything can be done using the UI based customization and integration tool.

To add chat to your website or app just paste the single line of Embed code where you want the chat to appear.

Because the chat extracts away the complexity, you can basically set up the chat be have an event running basically in minutes.

If you want even more customization, precision control and deep integration with your platform you can use developer friendly API and SDk for even more customizability.

UI Customization tool

Customizable:

UI Based customization tool: DeadSimpleChat you can customize every aspect of the chat to make it look like a part of your website or app

You can customize the size of the chatbox, fonts, colors and background everything is customizable using the UI based customization tool

You can also use API and SDK to create chat rooms on the fly and customize it as well with your branding and customization

Feature toggle

Feature toggle:

All the features in the DeadSimpleChat can be enabled and disabled as per your requirement, you can enable file sharing, image sharing, polls, Q&A, privacte messaging, moderator chat and much more

Polls and Surveys

Organizers and moderators can pose questions in real time and gather attendee feedback and opinions during live sessions

Results are also instantly displayed thus enhancing engagement

Q&A Sessions:

There is a dedicated Q&A mode that moderators and hosts can enable, here all the questions and answers are forwarded to the chatroom once approved by the moderators

After the sessions are over these session chat can also be exported and if you want the chat can also be deleted for privacy reasons.

Advanced Moderation:

There are advanced AI based moderation features available, which automatically removes explicit images from the chat room.

There are also list of bad words which when enabled cannot be said in the chat room

Moderators can also step up anytime and delete any message and ban unruly users from the chat thus creating a safe and professional environment.

Secure:

All the messages in the DeadSimpleChat are TLS encrypted in transit thus protecting sensitive information.

DeadSimpleChat is also GDPR compliant thus making it suitable for European audiences as well

Data residency options: You can also request E.U data residency as well. By default the data residency is in Canada.

Enterprise Grade Infrastructure: Built to handle DDoS attacks and other security threats under high stress environment with millions of concurrent users, your event remains accessible and secure.

Single Sign ON SSO and API and SDK (optional)

DeadSimpleChat has Single Sign On or SSO, this is optional, with SSO the attendees who are already on your platform automatically enter the chat room with username and login that is assigned by you.

With REST APIs you can manage users, send messages, utilize channels, do customization and more programatically.

SDK beyond the basic embed, you can also create your own chat interface from scratch and use the DeadSimpleChat backend, for this DeadSimpleChat provides JavaScript chat SDK and React and React Native chat SDKs as well

Downsides

Paid Subscription required:

DeadSimpleChat comes with a free plan that supports 5 concurrent users after that you have to pay for event plans and there are monthly plans also available

Does not have registration and ticketing features:

Unlike event platforms DeadSimpleChat does not have event registration and ticketing features, as this is an event chat platform.‌

FaceBook Chat

Facebook Chat

Facebook is well know to everybody and if you are considering hosting an event on Facebook itself then Facebook chat is the way to go within the social media platform

Facebook events and event chat is best for small to medium community based events or social gatherings. Best if your audience is already active on Facebook.

Features of Facebook Chat

Integrated with Facebook events and Groups:

If your event is already setup as a Facebook event or you have a dedicated group on facebook then you can host all your related announcements, polls and Q&A sessions in one place

Facebook events and Groups have one requirement: all your members and participants must be on facebook

You cannot add Facebook chat to your website or platform, it will be on facebook. If you want the chat besides the video stream on your website then this is not possible with Facebook chat

Facebook Messenger integration

Facebook chat is integrated with messenger this is a good feature when you want the attendees to be active during the go and good for last minute update, directions and schedule changes.

Easy User adoption

Familiar Platform: Most people already have a facebook account, if it is not a requirement to have the event on your website or platform than this could be a cheaper option to have events on the facebook chat

Instant Engagement: Attendees do not have to download anything other than the facebook app that they might already have. Since all the attendees need to be on facebook.

This could be a good choice for small fundraisers or local community events, but the requirement is that everything must be on facebook

If you trying to build your own community or have an event on your own platform than facebook chat might not be the best platform for you

Downsides

Limited Branding and customization:

You do not have any branding and customization features with facebook, which cannot be customized to suit your brand and cannot be embedded in your website or platform.

Privacy concerns:

Because facebook earns money through ads, some users are hesitant to use Facebook due to data privacy and security issues.

Facebook has all the data that you submit to the platform, including your chat and participant attendee chats etc which facebook can use according to their privacy policy.

Requires Facebook accounts:

The event participants who do not have or do not want to use their facebook accounts will be excluded from the events

Less suited for formal events:

Facebook chat lacks advanced moderation and analytics tools that are needed for formal and professional events.

GroupMe

GroupMe is a casual group chat app that is best for Casual meetups, Student groups, Kids groups and the like

It is best when you need quick group communication without heavy customization, reliability, security, moderation and other features that professional and corporate events require

It is also free to use which is best if you are holding casual meetups.

Dedicated Group chat rooms:

GroupMe has the ability to create seprate chat rooms that are for a specific event thus it keeps the discussions on that chat room only

You can also easily invite participants to the chat as well through a simple link or a phone number.

Sharing and Notifications:

Group Members recieve notifications for new messages or image related annoucements

Straightforward interface:

Downsides

Basic Features set:

While it is good for simple group chats, it lacks advanced event specific tools such as polls, Q&A, advanced customization and ability to embed in your website

Minimal customization:

There are limited branding options and the tool is basically designed with school children in mind. It invites users to create an account with there school email, although anyone can join but this shows who their target market is basically.

No Moderation features

There are basically no moderation features available on this platform, there is potential overhead for large scale corporations with thousands of attendees.

Cannot handle large groups:

While groupme can handle large groups of people it is not designed for large scale conferences with thousands of attendees

Google Chat

The organizations that have already subscribed to Google workspace and who want to keep everything in the google ecosystem, that id from event scheduling to post event follow up can use google chat.

Features of Google Chat

Google workspace integration:

The Google Chat has integration with all the google products namely google calendar, google drive and gmail this allows you to use the tools for better management of your event

There are scheduled reminders and automated event invites so that no one misses key dates

Threaded Conversations:

You can create multiple channels for different conversations about different topics, this could be useful in event planning where different teams will handle different topics

Persistent Past history

Past messages that are sent in the chat rooms are easily searchable and thus it prevents valuable information from getting lost

Secure and Compliant

The Google chat is built on google secure platform thus there is encryption in transit as well at rest

Google chat is best for organization that is already using google workpace and want to have internal meetings and corporate events with employees, without the need for third party tools

Downsides

Requires Google workspace

To get all the features you must be subscribed to google workspace, which can be cost that you have take into account.

No suited for Events

This is not inherently build for events it lacks features like polls, Q&A modules and moderation features

Inviting External users is a challenge

Inviting people from outside your team is a challenge and need to follow a series of steps.

Less Branded experience:

Google chat is google branded and you cannot change the branding, colors and fonts or anything here

Microsoft teams

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is for mid to large corporations that are heavily reliant of Microsoft 365. The staff already uses Microsoft teams and can easily conduct the team conferences. Having event chat is an easy add-on for internal events

Built for Enterprise collaboration

The Microsoft teams work with Outlook, Sharepoint and OneDrive amoung other softwares by microsoft. So, if you are into Microsoft's ecosystem then this could be a good choice for you.

Here you can invite the users though Outlook and store files in the One drive and send them and communicate with others using Microsoft teams

Event Chat Toggle

With Microsoft teams you can have town halls and live events with your team mates and have Q&A sesssions.

This allows real time interaction between employees without spilling into day to day activities

Security and compliance: Microsoft has enterprise grade security measures this makes the teams chat extremly secure thus your corporate information and event information remains extremely secure

Downsides

Complex licensing requirements: Free features are limited and large scale event capabilities are not supported.
Steep learning curve: It requires a lot of learning to host event, because the teams chat was designed for well teams and not for hosting events
Limited Branding and customization Options: There are basically no branding and customization options available with teams it is Microsoft branded and will remain so, you cannot change the brand or the colors or anything with regards to the chat interface
External participant access is complex: Inviting people that are not part of your organization is difficult with
Cannot Embed on your website: Microsoft teams cannot be embedded on your website or app it remains a standalone app and that's it

Embedded Chat Widget – DeadSimpleChat

Dead Simple Chat Team — Sun, 12 Jan 2025 16:19:36 GMT

In this article we are going to learn about DeadSimpleChat and its embedded chat widget. Which you can use to add chat to any website or app

The Chat widget form DeadSimpleChat is useful for a variety of use cases such as

Virtual and Hybrid events including Live Streaming
Community Chat or Social Platform
SaaS Application like Finance, Education, e-commerce marketplace and even as a fireside chat or chat on a news website

Group and 1-1 Chat:

DeadSimpleChat has capacity for 10 Million online concurrent users in teh group chat and has hte capacity for 1-1 chat as well.

Channels and Sub Groups

In this DeadSimpleChat you can create Channels or sub rooms like booths in a virtual event or classes in an educational App

Chat Moderation

In DeadSimpleChat you can do chat moderation as well. With features like Ban /Un Ban users, delete messages, create multiple moderators, Ban Bad words, A.I based Image moderation and much more

Customization and Branding

In DeadSimpleChat you can customize the chat interface to completely suit your website theme and make the chat look like a part of your website

With custom colors, fonts, your brand logo and even ability to change the chat layout all though our UI based customization tool

Like and Reply to messages

In DeadSimpleChat you can give your chat users the ability to like and reply to messages.

Chat APIs and Webhooks:

If you have a developer and need completely custom chat,with UI built from the ground up, you can have that as well.

DeadSimpleChat has JavaScript Chat API and SDK as well APIs for other front end frameworks like Angular and React as well

Single Sign On:

If you want, you can have it so that the users on your website or platform are automatically logged into the chat using the username that you assign to them

This is completely options, you can also have it so that users can create any optional username and enter the chat

Multi tenancy:

With Multi tenancy, you can roll out the chat to your customer while keeping them completely separate from each other

Chat Analytics:

DeadSimpleChat comes with Chat Analytics that has graphs and other important data about chat.

This data includes information like peak chat users, number of messages sent in the chat and much more

100% Uptime guarantee during events:

DeadSimpleChat comes with a 100% guaranteed uptime during events and a 99.999% Uptime for other chat plans.

Image and file sharing:

With DeadSimpleChat you can enable your chat visitors to do image sharing as well as file sharing. (this is completely up to you. You can disable image and file sharing easily if you want to).

Step By Step Guide

In this section we are going to learn how to embed chat on your website using DeadSimpleChat

DeadSimpleChat

Account Creation

Go to DeadSimpleChat.com then click on the Get Started button then fill out the form to create an account.

2. Creating a Chat Room

After you have created an account you will land up in the Dashboard page.

DeadSimpleChat

You can create a chat room here, click on the create chat room button to start the process of creating a chat room.

3. General settings

Here you can name your chat room, write a short description to remind you what this chat room is all about, upload a logo which is optional and click on the Save button to create a chat room

you can also create a chat room using API, the links to create the chat room are give above

General settings

Here you can see some general settings that you can do in the chat room

This includes enabling /disabling of various features, ability to export files and messages and ability to delete the chat room or delete all the messages of the chat room

4. Customization

Next section we are considering is Customize which is next to the members button at the top

Customize

As you can see the customize section you can customize the chat room with custom colors, fonts and layout changes as well and you can see them reflected right into the chat room.

You can also use the JavaScript API and SDK to create chat room and set customization for that chat room.

You can also add members to the chat room and create Polls as well and translate the chat into different languages

5. Embedding on your website

You can easily embed the chat on your website. Click on the embed info button at the top

There you can change the size of the chat box and you even have the option of embedding the chat as a chat box or as a chat button

you can also customize the size if the chat box and see it reflected below

To embed the chat on your website, just paste the embed code where you want the chat to appear and thats it.

6. For HTML site

For HTML site it is pretty simple, you can create the embed code in the Dashboard and then all you need to do is paste the embed code on your HTML where you want the chat to appear and that's it

For WordPress

In wordpress just login to your dashboard and go to the page where you want to add the chat

then add a HTML box where you want the chat to appear and add the embed code there

then click on the preview to see the chat box preview

DeadSimpleChat

Need Event Chat for your website or app

DeadSimpleChat is an Chat provider

Add Scalable Chat to your app in minutes
10 Million Online Concurrent users
99.999% Uptime and 100% guaranteed Uptime durring events
Moderation features
1-1 Chat
Group Chat
Polls
Q&A Sessions
Fully Customizable
Chat API and SDK
Pre-Built Chat

Group Chat apps for 2025

Dead Simple Chat Team — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 19:57:50 GMT

In this article we are going to learn about group chat apps and help you decide which one is best for you

These are the chat apps that we are looking at in this article

DeadSimpleChat
Slack
Discord
Microsoft Teams
Mattermost

DeadSimpleChat

DeadSimpleChat is designed with a variety of use cases in mind, like virtual events, live streaming, community chat, education, e-commerce and SaaS and much more

Features:

Scalability:

Handles up to 10 million online concurrent users in a single chat room.

This makes it a good choice for virtual events and large communities.

Customization:

DeadSimpleChat offers customization to suit your website. you can use the UI based customization tool and even use the Custom CSS option along with APIs

Ease of integration:

You can easily integrate the DeadSimpleChat in your website using the embed code. you can also customize it with UI based customization tools

If you want you can also use custom css to customize the chat from the ground up and you can also utilize our chat API and SDK for better integration with your use case and website

Advanced Moderation:

DeadSimpleChat you can create multiple moderators and assign them to chat rooms. You can also do AI based moderation and ban bad words and images from your chat room

You can also customize which words and phrases are banned from the chat room for example a compititors name etc

You can also ban / Un ban users from the chat room and also delete their previously sent messages from the chat as well.

Security:

Features such as TLS encryption and GDPR compliance enaure secure communication and security for the chat room and all the messages that are send in the chat

Use Cases:

It is perfect for live events, virutal events, community, e-commerce, gaming, finance basically anywhere you need a group chat or 1 to 1 chat

Pricing:

The DeadSimpleChat comes with a free plan with 5 concurrent users
DeadSimpleChat also has Growth Plans with 500 concurrent users for 199 USD /mo.
DeadSimpleChat also has a Business Plan with 500 concurrent users for 369 USD / mo
DeadSimpleChat also has dedicated event plans that are sold per day and comes with 100% Uptime guarantee.

Slack-

Slack

Best for: Workplace collaboration

Slack is widely used for team collaboration and communication in corporations big and small.

It has a design that emphasizes efficiency and allows teams to organize communications in specific channels.

Making sure that projects and discussions stay organized

Features:

Channels: you cn organize the conversations by teams projects or even topics
Integrations: It integrates with popular tools such as Trello, Jira and google drive
File Sharing and calls: You can do file sharing and audio video calls with collegues
Search: Allows users to search for messages and files

Limitations:

For small groups: It is primary focused on teams working in small groups
Cost: It becomes very expensive as you scale
Scalability: It has a specific use case, for working in small teams. You cannot host virtual events or large community meeting with new participants in it.
Customization: There is limited visual customization with Slack available.
Pricing at scale: Slack becomes more and more expensive as your team grows

Pricing:

Free Tier: Limited to 90 days message history and only 1 workspace
Pro Plan: 8.75 USD / mo per user
Business Plus: 15 USD /mo per user
Enterprise plan available with custom pricing

Discord

Best For: Gaming and Community chat (NOT hostable on your website)

Discord was orginally designed for gamers, but has grown into a community chat.

It has voice and video capabilities and makes it a favorite for gaming centric audiences

It has a major drawback though, you cannot add or embed it in your website.

If you want something to add to your website and be a part of your website, then you can consider DeadSimpleChat it is best for gaming and communities and you can add or embed it on your website and looks like a part of your website with custom branding, fonts and colors.

Features:

Voice/ Video Channels: It has real time voice and video capabilities
Scalable: It can handle large scale users and can accomodate thousands of people in the chat room
Custom roles and permissions: the admins can set custom roles and access controls for different types of users.
Bot integrations: You can also add bots and thus extend functionality like moderation and games and automation

Limitations:

UI Complexity: With so many features the UI feels cluttered and overwhleming for those who do not regularly use it in their lives like for non gamers etc
Branding limitations: Offers limited customization options and does not integrate with your website or live stream

Pricing:

Free Tier: Includes users with limited functionality
Nitro Plan: 9.99 USD / mo it is basically for you as an individual participant. Every participant has to buy their own Nitro Plan

Microsoft teams

Microsoft Teams

Best for: Team Communications

Microsoft teams is built for companies and startups and seamlessly integrates with the Microsoft office suite

It is a major compititor for Slack, it has all the features or slack and then some more and for a fraction of the price

Microsoft teams is a powerful tools for organizations, schools and teams.

Features:

Office Suite Integration: It has tight integration with all the Microsoft office products like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and others
It has built in video conferencing for team meetings
Channels and Tabs: You can organize communication and integrate apps directly within channels
Security: There is enterprise grade security features built in with corporate complaince needs

Limitations:

Complex Interface: the user interface can be intimidating for new users and smaller teams
Event Support: While the Microsoft teams can handle the workplace communications easily, it is not designed for other use cases such as virtual events and external communities

Pricing:

There are business plans and home plans available with Microsoft teams. In the Home plans there is a free tier
The business plans are by far the cheaper and comes with a lot more features than slack
The business plan stars with 5.40 USD /mo per user plus tax and the Office 365 basic plan is 8.1 USD / mo per user and comes with the Office suite of products that work on the internet.

Mattermost

Best for: Open source and Self hosted collaboration

Mattermost is best for organizations that are seeking self hosted solutions for team collaboration and communication.

It is an alternative to Slack and offers greater control over your data and customizability

Features

Self Hosted: Mattermost is a self hosted alternative to slack, thus you gain control over your infrastructure and chat.
Team Collaboration: Supports channels, file sharing, and integrations
Customization: Open source nature allows you to customize the chat extensively

Limitations:

Technical expertise: As it is open source it requies technical expertise to setup and configure the chat platform
Scalability: It has limited out of the box scalability as it is designed with small teams in mind

Pricing:

Mattermost being open source software is free but you need to bear the cost of hosting the software on your server and need technical expertise to install the software and maintain the software on your server

DeadSimpleChat

Need Event Chat/ Community Chat for your website or app

DeadSimpleChat is an Chat provider

Add Scalable Chat to your app in minutes
10 Million Online Concurrent users
99.999% Uptime and 100% guaranteed Uptime durring events
Moderation features
1-1 Chat
Group Chat
Polls
Q&A Sessions
Fully Customizable
Chat API and SDK
Pre-Built Chat

White Label Chat Platform for 2025

Dead Simple Chat Team — Sat, 28 Dec 2024 20:18:53 GMT

Virtual events, live streaming and online communities have become very important channels for businesses to engage with their audience

White label chat solution are needed to address the unique needs of the business. As businesses need customization options to reflect their brand identity and scalable chat that can accommodate millions of concurrent users.

DeadSimpleChat is a modern , fully customizable and white label chat solution that empowers businesses.

You can build engaging and branded communication experiences for virtual events, online communities and live streaming.

DeadSimpleChat provides all the tools you need to scale effectively and deliver exceptional user engagement

Why white labeling is important?

Brand Consistency:

A white label chat makes sure that your communication tools align perfectly with your brand identity

Every element, from colors to font and your company logo conveys your brand image to the audiences

Hosting a virtual event or running a community where users are immersed in your brand at every interaction, this is only possible with white label chat platform

Customer Trust

A white label chat platform with your branding and UI gives a feeling of trust and professionalism.

Here users feel more secure and valued when they are interacting with host brand chat rather than a third party tool. This familiarity increases long term engagement and loyalty

Revenue Opportunities

White Label chat you can achive monetization as well. Businesses can incorporate sponsored content, and in chat advertisements that works best with their audience

DeadSimpleChat.com

Embed Online Group Chat platform for websites

DeadSimpleChat.com

Virtual Events User Journey

White Label chat for Virtual events

Unique needs of Virtual events

Virtual events needs engagement and real time interaction to work. With chat you need features like Q&A sessions, instant polls, group and one to one chat to enable the participants to feel heard and involved

Scalability for large audiences

Virtual events range from small sessions with a few people to large scale summits with thousands of attendees

The chat solution must scale to seamlessly accommodate different sizes of audiences without latency or performance issues

There should also be the ability to handle spikes in activity like during key note speeches

DeadSimpleChat has the ability to handle up to 10 million online concurrent users

DeadSimpleChat has guaranteed 100% uptime during events and seamless performance

Features that you need for Virtual events

Customization for brand look and feel: DeadSimpleChat widgets can be fully customized with logos, colors and fonts to reflect the hosts branding

This makes sure that every attendee sees that chat widget as a part of the event website fostering a professional and polished experience

Robust moderation tools

AI powered moderation: Automatically filter out inappropriate content, spam or offensive language making sure a safe and respectful environment for all participants.

Ease of integration: DeadSimpleChat has pre built chat widget, so you can add chat to your event website or platform with minimal technical expertise.

Moderation Features

AI powered moderation: Automatically filter our in appropriate content spam or offensive language thus creating an environment that is safe for all users
Moderator Controls: Create multiple moderators with abilities to delete messages, ban/ un ban users and pin important messages to the chat
Customizable rules: Event admins can tailor moderation rules based on their requirement such as enabling or disabling features like ability to send files and images in chat room, 1-1 messages and other features. Create a list of custom bad words etc

Advanced Analytics for engagement tracking

Real time data Insights: You can track metrics like peak messages sent in the chat room, engagement sessions during different events, peak total users in the chat room
Exportable reports: You can also export the reports as well as the messages that are sent in the chat room and afterwords delete the chat messages or the chat room itself
User sentiment analysis: You can estimate the sentiment in real time and understand user interactions and improve live content delivery

DeadSimpleChat.com

Embed Online Group Chat platform for websites

Go To DeadSimpleChat.com

White Label chat platform for Community Chat.

Online community work on meaningful connections, active engagement and a shared sense of belonging

At the centre of these communities lies the ability to communicate effectively, which is why a good chat platform is needed.

You can enable real time conversations by creating a secure space for online participants. DeadSimpleChat helps communities strengthen bonds and encourage participant participation and loyalty in the community

Here are some points why chat is important in online communities

Encourage conversations that foster Engagements

Members revisit previous conversations, thus getting a sense of continuity and connection

Facilitates relationship building: Live chat creates a feeling of deeper connections through consistent interaction
Supports knowledge sharing: Communities that are focused on topics such as education, hobbies, professional development etc can benefit from chat tool as a collaborative learning environment.

Privacy and security concerns are there for controlled environment

In controlled environments trust is very important. Members must feel safe when they are sharing their thoughts and ideas.

Controlled Access: Restricted acces into chat rooms using SSO makes sure that only authorized members can participate, thus creating a secure environment.

Data Privacy: For communities in regions where there is regulations like GDPR, a complaint chat platform like DeadSimpleChat provides reassurances that member is handled responsibly

Safe Interactions: Security measures like encryption and moderated content ensure that sensitive or harmful behaviour is reduced

DeadSimpleChat for Communities

Channels and Sub Rooms for Niche Discussions:

Topic Specific Spaces: Communities often consist of diverse member interests

With DeadSimpleChat, you can create sub-rooms or channels dedicated to specific topics or groups such booths in a virtual event or live event.

Dynamic Structure: With sub rooms you can enable conversations that are focused and organized, this reduces clutter and enhances the users and audiences experience

Moderation tools for creating safe and welcoming space in the white label chat solution

AI based moderation: It automatically detects the bad content and deletes it from the chat room, thus the conversations are respectful and productive

Creating multiple moderators: You can create multiple moderators and assign them to different chat rooms to maintain moderation and positivity

User Management: Features like banning un banning users, deleting offensive messages provide full control over the chat environment.

Language translation for global audiences

Multilingual communities

In todays world communities often consist of people from different countries and languages. DeadSimpleChat has capabilities that allow members to communicate seamlessly, regardless of their language

Custom language settings

Organizers can set the chat interface to any language they like, there are some custom pre set languages as well or you can set the language to any language you want

Global Accessibility

The DeadSimpleChat is globally accessible and fosters a feeling of unity among diverse audiences

Live Streaming: Driving Real Time Interactions

Live streaming is a powerful means of engaging with audiences, live streaming can be used for a variety of purposes including product launches, entertainment events or educational content

When you are creating a successful live streaming experience it depends on dynamic audience interactions

What are the challenges in Live Streaming Chat

Managing rapid messages in real time without lag

In live streaming, there are a lot of messages because there could be a million participants sending messages simultaneously. You need a robust platform that can handle the traffic like DeadSimpleChat

Controlling Spam and ensuring message relevancy

Popular Streams are often inundated with span messages, trolling and irrelevant content, which can drown out meaningful conversations and interactions, taking away from the productive and respectful environment

You need proper moderation tools in order to maintain a productive and respectful environment

DeadSimpleChat has whole host of moderation tools that you can use to make chat a better experience for everybody.

Real time filtering

DeadSimpleChat has an advanced AI based filternation and moderation system that detects and removes all sorts of spam, offensive language, or inappropriate behaviour in real time. It also does not allow explicit images to be shown in the chat

Customizable rules

You can also define custom moderation rules to fit your needs, you can create custom bad words that cannot be posted in teh chat room

These could be a compititors name or anything that you do not want in the chat room.

Features such as dashboard based moderation are also available with DeadSimpleChat

User Management

Moderators can easily ban/ un ban users react to comments, delete disruptive comments manually or shadow ban users giving moderators full control of the chat

Reactions and live polling to engage audiences

Emoji Reactions

Allow chat participants to instantly react to jokes and comments or exiciting moments during the live stream with emojis. These reactions create a lively and very interactive environment

Live polling:

Hosts can create polls to gather audience input, generate excitement or the guide the direction of the stream.

Enhanced Interaction

These features encourage the viewers to interact more and increase their engagement with the event

Scalability to support massive Live Streams and guaranteed uptime

High volume capacity: DeadSimpleChat can handle up to 10 Million online concurrent participants, this ensures that even the biggest events and live streams can be done
Guaranteed Uptime: DeadSimpleChat comes with 99.999% Uptime and 100% Uptime guarantee during events. This makes sure that the event goes as expected
Dynamic adaptability: You can host a niche stream with a few hundred participants or a global event with millions of chat participants.

DeadSimpleChat

Need Event Chat for your website or app

DeadSimpleChat is an Chat provider

Add Scalable Chat to your app in minutes
10 Million Online Concurrent users
99.999% Uptime and 100% guaranteed Uptime durring events
Moderation features
1-1 Chat
Group Chat
Polls
Q&A Sessions
Fully Customizable
Chat API and SDK
Pre-Built Chat

Here are some of our other articles that you might consider

Chat Room Software for your website

Dead Simple Chat Team — Wed, 25 Dec 2024 15:49:42 GMT

In this article we are going to learn about chat room software and which chat room is best for your website

Here is what we are going to learn in this article

What is website Engagement
Rise of Chat Software
What is DeadSimpleChat
Building Community
Boosting conversion rates
Practical Use Cases
Virtual Hybrid Events
Community Chat
Chat for News websites
Finance Chat
Q&A Chat for educational platforms
Features to look for in Chat room software
Ease of Integration
Customization Options
Scalability
Security
Analytics
Q&A and Polls
1-1 chat

Website engagement\

Why website engagement matters

Nowadays, it is no longer enough to create a static website and that's it. You need to capture and retain the users attentention

Users want more than just information, they need interaction and a sense of community

Website engagement is measured using metrics such as session duration and bounce rates and conversion rates is one of the most important indicators of how the website is performing

Also, engagement isn't just about keeping the users on the website, It is also about having meaningful ways to fullfil the users needs in real time.

An engaged user on an community driven chat is more likely to return
Live chat Tools have features such as Q&A and Polls
Chat tools should also have scalability to supports millions of users in real time

evolution of chat room software

Why Chat Room Software is a Game Changer

One of the most critical factors in website satisfaction is speed. Visitors often want immediate answers to their questions

Chat rooms are not just some tools for communication, these also foster a sense of community by creating spaces where users with shared interests or goals can interact with each other.

Chat Room Software bridges this gap by enabling

Immediate responses: Users can ask questions, resolve issues and share feedback without the wait
Dynamic Interactions: There will be real time communication with a sense of presence this make users feel valued and heard.
Improved User experiences: There is instant feedback and clarity when replying to questions and getting answers for them
Shared Identity: Chat room are for niche audiences that give users a sense of belonging
Encouraging Repeat visits: A strong community is the reason for users to return to the website again
User led Engagement: Community members can drive discussions and generate content

Features to look for in chat room softwa

Features to look for in Chat Room Software

Ease of Integration
Customization
Scalability
Security
Analytics
SSO
Group Chat
1 to 1 chat
Pools
Q&A
Moderation Features like ban bad words and ban users delete messages
Chat API and SDK
Pre Built Chat
Reliability during event (100 % Uptime guarantee).
Management Features like export chat, delete chat rooms etc

Ease of Integration

Integration is often a major hurdle when you want to implement chat to your website

You need a simple setup that gets you up and running quickly. DeadSimpleChat is a plug and play solution that helps you do just that

Quick Setup: DeadSimpleChat comes with no code setup, using which you can easily embed chat in your website
Cross Platform Compatibility: You need a chat solution that works across all Content Management Systems like wordpress and others and also Plain HTML sites
Cross Platform API and SDK: For developers that need a deeper integration with API and SDK, DeadSimpleChat provides that flexibility with cross platform API and SDK. All the while maintaining the ease of use with UI based system that exists in parallel

Customization Options

The chat room should look like an integral part of your webist. With all the looks and color and theming of your website.

Here are some features that are needed

Branding: Ability to use your brand logo and name , colors and fonts that match your brand identity. DeadSimpleChat has this feature
Theming: Option to change colors and chat layout to match with your site UI. This can be done using the UI based editor in DeadSimpleChat
Feature selection: Enable /disable features like file sharing and user tagging etc. This can also be done in DeadSimpleChat

Scalability

When doing events that are on a large scale, you need a chat solution that can scale up with you.

DeadSimpleChat comes with support for upto 10 Million online concurrent users

With a scalable chat service like DeadSimpleChat you can rest assured that the chat will work no matter how many users come in your event.

Reliability

Reliability is of paramount importance whether you are running a community or an event.

You want your chat solution to be available all the time. DeadSimpleChat offers a 99.999% Uptime in community chat and a 100% Uptime guarantee in event plans.

Security

Security is very important whether you need a community chat or chat for a perticular event

Chat Room must be secure and all the communication should be stored securely

Important security features that are present in DeadSimpleChat

Encryption: DeadSimpleChat is secure through user and server encryption via the latest SSL/TLS encryption mechanism. Thus the DeadSimpleChat is secure.
Data Compliance: DeadSimpleChat adheres to standareds like GDPR
DeadSimpleChat comes with both secure and unsecure login mechanism. It is upto you how you want the users to enter the chat. In unsecure mechanism users can create any username and enter the chat room and in secure mechanism there is secure authentication mechanism present.

Analytics

In DeadSimpleChat you also get analytics features where in you can see details such as peak number of users, number of messages send in the chat room, number of chat participants and spectators and much or ingrained data and graphs.

SSO or Single Sign ON

Single Sign On in the context of DeadSimpleChat means that: Users that are loggin in on your website or platform gets automatically logged in to the chat room.

The username is the same as what you set for them in your website or platform thus it makes it feel to the users that chat is an integral part of your website.

Single Sign On

DeadSimpleChat has SSO or Single Sign On. You can learn more about SSO and how you can login the users automatically into the chat room in the documentation: Single Sign On DeadSimpleChat

Virtual Event Chat

Group Chat

Group chat is one of the core features of DeadSimpleChat. It has support for 1o Million online concurrent participants.

Apart from these there are a ton of group chat features that you need

Reply to messages: Users can reply to messages form other users and the messages appear in the UI along with ethe original message
Reactions: Users can react to messages as well with thumbs up, or heart
Roles and permissions: You can assign users as moderators and as normal users in DeadSimpleChat
Moderation: There are a whole host of moderation features available such as ban bad words, ban users, delete message, ability to create moderators, A.I based moderation and much more.
Channels: You can also create channels in the group chat. Channels are basically chat rooms within a chat room just like booths in a virtual event. It is up to you, multiple chat rooms can be created for seprate web pages and inside those chat rooms you can also create channles if you want to. You you do not want to use channles you can disable them as well.
Image and file sharing (If enabled by the admin): There is also the ability to share images and files in the chat room. You will need to enable the feature first.

Channels are chat rooms inside of chat rooms kind of like booths in a virtual event.

One to One Chat

There is one to one chat feature available in DeadSimpleChat but it is upto you the chat owner to decide whether you want to enable it for chat users or not.

To chat with another user click on the user's username and in the chat or in the sidebar to chat to another user in private.

Polls

You can also conduct polls with DeadSimpleChat. There are many benefits of conducting polls during events

Real Time Feedback: Gather instant input from event participants on topics
Encouraging Participation: Features like polls keep the audiences engaged
Data Collection: You can gain valuable information from user preferences or opinions

Q&A

Question and answer is very important for structured discussions during events.

Here moderators can answer the questions from the participants, approve valid questions that will contribute to the community.

Moderation Features

DeadSimpleChat has a whole host of moderation features that includes

Ban Bad words: You can create a list of bad words that will or appear in the chat. These can include the pre-created list or you can also submit your own list of words and these words can include anything including any competitors name etc that are banned from the chat.
Ban Users: You can ban the users from the chat room. Banned users cannot enter the chat room, send and message or respond in any manner. You can also un-ban the users as well, if you have banned some user by mistake.
Delete Messages: You can delete the messages as well, you can also assign moderators to the chat room. Moderators have the ability to delete messages
A.I Based automatic moderation: There is an automatic A.I based moderation feature available as well, where the A.I automatically bands bad images from the chat room

Chat API and SDK

DeadSimpleChat also comes with Chat API and SDK. Using Chat API and SDK you can integrate chat into your platfom with website or mobile apps

Custom Integration: DeadSimpleChat comes with REST API and JavaScript and React and React Native SDK. you can directky embed the chat in your website or HTML app or you can use the API and SDK for a more better integration amd creatge a custom app from scratch or add chat to your react native app
Flexibility for Developers: Having multiple API and SDK gives developers the flexibility of which route they want to take, easy route or the route with deeper integration. The decision is usuaaly based on your use case
Scalability: DeadSimpleChat is highlyy scalable with support upto 10 million online concurrent users

Management Features

There are a lot of management features also available with DeadSimpleChat. These include

Ability to export chat after the event is over: With this feature you can export all the chat from the chat rooms in a text file, after your event is over or even during the event.
Delete Chat room along with all the information: After the event is over you might want to delete all the chat rooms for privacy reasons or if your event is next year and you do not want your data in the DeadSimpleChat database
Export analytics: You can also export analytics with DeadSimpleChat like peak number or users, number or messages sent in the chat room and others
Ability to create Moderatots and assign them moderation abilities: As we have already discussed you can create moderators and these moderators have the ability to moderate the chat room like delete message, ban /un ban users and much more.

DeadSimpleChat

Need Event Chat for your website or app

DeadSimpleChat is an Chat provider

Add Scalable Chat to your app in minutes
10 Million Online Concurrent users
99.999% Uptime
Moderation features
1-1 Chat
Group Chat
Polls
Q&A Sessions
Fully Customizable
Chat API and SDK
Pre-Built Chat

Practical Use Cases for Chat Room Software

Virtual / Hybrid Event

During virtual events there is a need for interaction among audiences. Here chat rooms are needed for

Networking between attendees
Real Time Q&A sessions
Sharing resources with attendees
Conducting live polls during sessions

DeadSimpleChat os a good chat platform for virtual and hybrid events

Community Chat

Online communities need chat room for communication between members. Chat rooms allow community participants to

Discuss shared interests
Plan events and collaborate on projects
form deeper interactions and layal user base amoing like minded users.

14 Best Event Management Apps for 2025

Dead Simple Chat Team — Wed, 18 Dec 2024 23:23:09 GMT

In this article, we are going to review 9 of the best event management and planning apps for 2025

For you convince here is the full list of Apps

DeadSimpleChat
Cvent
Whova
EventBrite
Slido
Poll Everywhere
Tripleseat
Zoom Events
RingCentral Events
Airtable
Zoho Backstage
Bizzabo
Swapcard
Planning Pod ‌

DeadSimpleChat

DeadSimpleChat is a robust, real time chat application for events. It specializes in integrating live chat including, group chat and 1 to 1 chat functionality into virtual and hybrid events

Providing organizers to engage attendees, some of the features include:

Add Scalable Chat to your app in minutes: Easy to add the chat to any website, by just pasting the embed code where you want the chat to appear
10 Million Online Concurrent users: Highly scalable chat with upto 10 Million concurrent users support
99.999% Uptime: 99.999% uptime and 100% uptime during events
Moderation features: Moderation features like ban users, delete messages, A.I based moderation, shadow ban, banning bad words and more
1-1 Chat: Ability to enable/ disable 1-1 chat for your users
Group Chat: Highly scalable group chat
Fully Customizable: Fully customizable including colors, fonts and your custom branding with UI based chat customization
Chat API and SDK: Ability to performs all functions using Chat API and SDK. It is up to you, if you want the automation using Chat API and SDK or use the UI based management in Chat
Pre-Built Chat: The chat is pre-built, just paste the code in the website where you want the chat to appear.
Polls: You can conduct Polls with DeadSimpleChat
Surveys: You can conduct surveys with DeadSimpleChat
Single Sign On: You can automatically login users that are on your website to chat and assign them usernames with Single Sign On. If you do not use SSO then users can create any username and join the chat
Reactions: You can enable reactions in the chat if you want the users to be able to use reactions in the chat
Analytics and Reporting: You can see the analytics and reporting in the chat dashboard
Live Q&A: You can also conduct Q&A with your audiences with DeadSimpleChat.

Use Cases

A Hybrid tech conference with integrated live stream and DeadSimpleChat for group chat, 1 to 1 chat and live Q&A sessions.

It specializes in integrating live chat functionality into virtual and live events providing organizers to tools to engage with audiences

2. A global virtual summit with multilingual chat features that help attendees chat with each other.

Pros and Cons

Easy to integrate with your website
Highly customizable with colors, fonts and branding
Effective moderation and analytics tools
Ability to download chat history etc
Single Sign On feature where visitors that are logged into your website are automatically logged in to chat
Or users can create any username and enter chat.

Cons

Not a full event management tool, this is a chat feature that you can add to your event

Cvent

Cvent is a leading event management platform, it caters to large scale enterprises and corporate events.

With large set of tools for event planning and analytics. This is an all in one tool for event organizers that want all the bells and whistles for event planning and management

Key Features

Registering and Ticketing: Advanced customization options are available for attendee registeration and ticketing
Event Marketing and Automation: You can conduct Email Campaigns, create landing pages and lead tracking is integrated into the platform
Onsite Solutions: Badge printing and check in tools are available for in person events
Analytics & Reporting: Advanced analytics and event reporting tools are available
Integration Capabilities: Connects with CRM tools like Salesforce, Hubspot and others

Pros & Cons:

Highly scalable and suitable for events that need a full suite of features from event registration to booth pages etc.
Comprehensive marketing and reporting tools.
Excellent customer support.

Cons

Steep learning curve for new users.
High cost, especially for small to medium business.

Whova

Whova is an event management platform with attendee engagement tools. It has support for both virtual as well as in person events.

It provides tools that maximize networking and participant interaction

Key features

Attendee Networking: AI powered matchmaking and attendee profile
Event App: It has a mobile app that you can use for agendas, announcements and engagement
Interactive features: Live polling, Q&A and other
Custom Branding: You can customize the app with your branding and colors
Sponsorship features: You can showcase sponsor ads, virtual booths and in-app banners

Pros and Cons

Pros:

Engagement features and networking tools
Interactive features for organizers and easy to setup as compared to full event platforms such as Cvent.
Good for hybrid events and small virtual events

Cons:

Limited Scalability
Advanced features are locked behind very pricy higher tiers

Eventbrite

Eventbrite is one of the popular ticketing platforms and event promotion platforms. It is user friendly in design, and its wide audience reach makes it a good choice for small to medium events.

Key features

Ticketing and Registration: Customizable ticket options are there plus it comes with a built in payment processing system
Event Promotion: You can easily integrate it with social media platforms
Real time analytics: Track ticket sales attendee demographics and event performance
Mobile App: It comes with a mobile app that you can use for check in process and tracking the people coming for the event.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

Simple Interface for organizers and attendees
Pricing is a cut of the ticket prices, so for free events it is free
Event discovery features on eventbrite platform

Cons:

Limited in customization
Fees can add up for large events as pricing is 3.5% plus $1.59 per ticket.

Slido

Slido is an audience interaction tool with Q&A sessions, polls, etc. It enhances audience engagement with active participation and is suitable for in-person, virtual, or hybrid events.

Basically, you can add Slido to any third party app such as Zoom or Google Meet then add the interactive features to the video call app

Key Features

Live Q&A: It has Live Q&A features built into it
Polling: You can add polling to other video call apps such as Zoom or Google Meet
Analytics: It has analytics built into it, so that you can see details about polling, Q&A and others
Integrations: You can integrate it with most video call apps such as google meet or zoom

Pros & Cons

Pros:

User friendly and intuitive
Has audience engagement tools
Compatible with major virtual events platforms

Cons:

Focused on engagement lacks basic features such as chat and other event management features
Requires a subscription to access advanced features may not be suitable for one time events

Poll Everywhere

Poll everywhere is a real-time engagement tool, through polls, quizzes, and surveys.

It is a good choice for hybrid and virtual events with tools such as polls and quizzes for an interactive experience for attendees.

Key features

Live polling
Interactive Q&A
Surveys and Quizzes
Presentation and Integration

Pros and Cons

Pros:

Versatile polling and integrations
Easy to setup for organizers
Free tier for smaller events

Cons:

Limited features in free version
Advance features require pricier plans

tripleseat

Tripleseat

Triple Seat is a platform that is built for venue management and event planning.

It caters to the hospitality industry specifically. It has booking processes and enhances communication between venues and clients.

Key features

Lead Management
Event Booking
CRM integration
Customizable templates
Revenue tracking

Pros and Cons

Pros:

Specialized product for hospitality industry and venue management
Makes it easy to communicate between client and vendors
Excellent reporting tools for tracking revenue and performance

Cons:

Less suited for broader event management
Pricing is steep

Zoom Events

Zoom events is a newer entry into the event management platform category. It is an extension of Zoom meetings and is tailored for virtual and hybrid conferences

Zoom events has event registration, attendee engagement and analytics and it uses zoom conferencing capabilities

Key Features

Event Hubs
Registration and ticketing
Networking
Event Analysis

Pros and Cons

Pros:

Fully integrated into Zoom interface
Excellent for virtual and hybrid event setups
Streamlined attendee management and analytics
Full Platform for event management

Cons:

Limited in customization as compared to other platforms
Steep pricing

Ringcentral events

RingCentral Events

Ringcentral events is a platform for team collaboration and co ordination during events.

It has video conferencing and team messaging tools that are to be used by organizers who are managing hybrid or virtual events

Key features

Video streaming for up to 5000 viewers
Team messaging tools for communicating before, during and after the events between organizers
Real time Collaboration: Document sharing and editing on the ringcental platform
Integrations: Seamlessly integrate with your other office tools such as Salesforce, Slack and Microsoft 365
Moderator controls: Advanced moderator controls for managing virtual events

Pros and Cons

Pros:

Highly reliable for team communication and collaboration during the event planning and during the live event
Scalable for small meetings and organizing large events
Strong security and compliance measures

Cons:

Lacks specialized event management features such as ticketing and attendee engagement
Tool for organizing events and thus maybe an overkill for smaller events.

Airtable

Airtable is a project management tool that is designed for creative teams and event planners. It comes with customizable workflows.

Airtable is like a hybrid between a spreadsheet and a database offering tools for events planners

Key Features

Customizable templates
Collaborative features
Integration capabilities
Visualization Options
Automation

Pros and Cons

Pros:

It is a flexible and adaptable tool that can be used for planning different types of events
Intuitive interface that is suitable for beginners and advanced users alike
It is a good tool for managing data heavy tasks such as venue details and vendor lists

Cons:

Requires customization for complex tasks which can quite complex and time consuming
Does not have native event specific features such as ticketing and engagement features

Zoho backstage

Zoho Backstage

Zoho backstage is an end to end event management platform that ment for event organizers and has a streamlined approach catering to both virtual and in person events.

It is part of the Zoho suite of products and makes it a go to choice for those who are already in the Zoho ecosystem

Key features

Event website builder
Registration and ticketing
Engagement tools
Agenda management
Analytics

Pros and Cons

Pros:

Deep integration with Zoho tools such as Zoho CRM and Campaigns
Offers a lot of features
Affordable as compared to other large enterprise providers

Cons:

This may not scale for large scale users
UI can feel cluttered as compared to other providers

Bizzabo

Bizzabo is an all in one platform tailored for experiential marketing and analytics driven events

It is designed to help organizers and attendees excelling in hybrid and virtual events

Key Features

Event Marketing Tools
Audience Engagement
Advanced Analytics
Hybrid Event Capabilites
Custom Branding

Pros and Cons

Pros:

Good for organizations that are focused on marketing and branding
It has strong analytics and ROI tracking capabilities
It is suitable for complex hybrid events with large audiences

Cons:

Higher pricing for small businesses
Advanced features that requires a learning curve, if you are not already in the Zoho ecosystem

Swapcard

Swapcard is a leading platform that is focused on networking focused events, It offers tools that prioritize meaningful networing oppertunities between attendees

It has tools for both in person and virtual events

Key features

AI powered matchmaking
Virtual Expo Booths
Engagement tools
Event App
Analytics

Pros and Cons

Pros:

It has features for attendee engagement and networking
Good for events that has a strong focus on exhibitor and sponsor value
Intuitive and easy to navigate interface

Cons:

This lacks advanced management features for planners
Pricing is very expensive for smaller events

Planning Pod

It is an event management tool that is designedfor small busineses and indipendent event planners in mind

It is a cheap tool that simplifies event organization while keeping the cost down

Key features

Task Management
Budgeting tools
Attendee Management
Vendor Management
Templates

Pros and Cons

Pros:

Affordable for small event planners
It has comprehensive tools for managing budgets, vendors and attendees
User friendly interface with minimum learning curve

Cons:

Limited scalability features
Lacks advanced amrketing and attendee management features that are found in bigger competitiors

50 Corporate Event Ideas 2025 that will engage, inspire & delight.

Dead Simple Chat Team — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 17:39:00 GMT

These days corporate events have expanded from being limited to traditional conferences or trade shows to often blend in person and online elements

This shift has pushed organizers to create events that are not just visually impressive but also strategic in order to encapsulate the online as well as the offline parts of the event

In this article we are going to cover a curated list of 15 of the best cutting edge event concepts that are suited to B2B needs

Beyond just suggesting ideas I will also guide you on how to implement then effectively, measure the success, use the right tools and stay competitive in the long run

Here is a list of all the ideas that we are going to cover, so that you can skip of whichever you are most interested in or read them one by one

Section 1: Immersive Team Building Experiences

Professional Development Workshop
Collaborative Escape room
Friendly Scavenger Hunt
Paint and Sip Session
Outdoor Sports Event
Community Service Marathon
Mixology Class
Virtual Reality (VR) Team Challenge
Culinary Experience
Interactive Social wall

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Section 2 Engaging Themed and Seasonal Celebrations

Holiday gift bags and Appreciation gifts
Secret Santa gift exchange
Ugly Sweater or Costume Contest
Holiday Baking Contest
Holiday Charity Event
Casino Night
Masquerade Ball
Sci-Fi Extravaganza
Roaring 20s Gala
Around the world cultural fair

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Section 3 Virtual & Hybrid Event Innovations

DeadSimpleChat

Virtual Trivia Tournament
Virtual wine Tasting
Virtual Awards Ceremony
Virtual Scavenger Hunt
Online Cooking Classes
Virtual Hackathon or Coding Challenge
Digital Trade Show or Expo
Virtual Career Fair
Augmented Reality Product Demo
Digital Concert or Entertainment Night

‌Section 4: Thought Leadership & Educational Events

Leadership development workshops
Educational Lunch and Learn Sessions
Industry Conference and Trade Show Presence
Tech Fair
Expert led Panel

Section 5: Brand Showcases and Product Launches

ExIn Person Launch Party
Interactive Online Demo
Collaborative VIP Preview Event
Exclusive VIP Preview Event
Product Showcase at Industry Conferences

Section 6: Corporate Social reponsability and fundraising events

Charity Gala
Charity walk or run / Fitness challenge
Auction Night
Community Clean Up day
DIY workshop Series for charity

Section 7: Community Engagement and Cultural Experiences

Neighborhood Potluck Dinner
Cultural Fair
Outdoor movie night
Art in the part exhibition
Community Talent show

Section 1: Immersive Team Building Experiences

Professional development workshop

What it is: This is a training session led by an expert. Often, it is customized and tailored to what your team needs, including leadership, data analysis, negotiation tactics, and how to be a team player, etc.

How to Execute:

Invite an expert from a reputable consulting firm which specialize in these events.

Encourage hands-on activities, group work, and personalized feedback sessions.

Why it works:

You invest in your team's growth and promote a learning culture that will increase the job satisfaction, career advancement and helps employees improve their work performance

Collaborative Escape room

What it is: A themed puzzle experience where participants have to think their way out of a room. Here they need to work together, take in all the clues, and communicate with each other effectively. There is also time pressure in order to escape the room.

How to execute: You can book an escape room venue or set up one in your office using rented props and puzzles.

You can consider tailoring the story line to your brand or any industry challenges to make it more exciting

Why it works: Teams learn to leverage every member’s strength and adapt their strategy dynamically, thus building trust and a sense of camaraderie. These qualities directly translate to teamwork at the office.

Friendly Scavenger Hunt

What it is: It is a game where teams search for some hidden treasure by following some clues, solving riddles, and racing against the clock to complete the tasks.

How to execute: Use a mix of digital and physical platforms for example using smartphone based scavenger hunt apps and physical clues.

Include your company values, brand history, and product features in the tasks for the scavenger hunt.

Why it works: The activity involves strategic thinking, resourcefulness and collaboration.

Tip: It should be flexible enough in order to cater to all fitness levels and group sizes.

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Paint and Sip Session

What it is: A relaxed and guided art workshop, where participants create their paintings and enjoy some drinks and refreshments ( coffee, tea, or refreshments).

How to execute: Hire a local artist who can teach the participants at the office or at a local studio. Offer non-alcoholic beverage options for inclusivity.

Why it works: Creative activities help employees decompress, inspire informal conversations and break down barriers

The final artworks can be displayed in the office for some time, reminding the teams of their shared experience. Then, finally, the employees should be allowed to take the paintings to their homes.

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Outdoor Sports event

What it is: A day that is dedicated to friendly athletic competitions. These could be anything from a company softball game to an office wide track and field day

How to execute: Partner with a sports club or rent a local field. Provide the equipment and healthy snacks. Remember to create balanced teams that mix departments and seniority levels.

Why it works: Physical activity builds the rapport among team members in a relaxed, non corporate environment.

teammates see each others strengths, bond together and cheer each other on thus improve workplace interactions

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Community Service Marathons

What it is: A community service where employees volunteer together. It could be anything like working at a local food bank, cleaning the local park or mentoring underprivileged kids

How to execute: Partner with a reputable non profit organization, co-ordinate the logistics of the work that is the transportation, supplies etc and allow employees to choose tasks that align with their interests

Why it works: Builds a team building effort and instills pride and a sense of purpose. Employees see that the company cares about employees and society at large more than just profits.

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Mixology Class

What it is: A hands on cocktail or mocktail making session that is taught be a professional bartender

How to execute: Bring in a professional bartender and set up stations with fresh ingredients glassware and recipe cards

Set up stations where there is a small challenge and allow teams to invent their own drinks

Why it works: Social and lighthearted event, a mixology class encourages communication, creativity and an evening filled with fun. This is a good option for breaking down formalities and uniting diverse teams.

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Virtual Reality (VR) Team Challenge

What it is: A Virtual reality immersive tech experience where teams solve problems or complete missions in a shared virtual environment.

How to Execute: Rent or purchase VR headsets for your team and select collaborative, team oriented VR games that your teams can play together

Offer a mix of physical meeting spaces and remote logins in order to accommodate remote and well as in office teams

Why it works: VR challenges are new, energizing and inclusive. Catering to people with all kinds of skills and abilities. These reinforce adaptability, help bridge geographic gaps and appeal to a more modern and tech savvy organization.

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Fish for your food Culinary experience

What it is: An event where your team mates source their own ingredients on a farm or a fishing trip and then create their own food under the guidance of a professional chef

How to execute: Partner with a fishery or a farm to table restaurant. Ensure proper safety measures and consider vegetarian food along with the non veg food in order to cultivate inclusivity

Why it works: The unconventional experience teaches the team mates qualities like problem solving, patience and resourcefulness.

The shared accomplishment of preparing and enjoying the food creates a sense of achievement

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What it is: It is a live digital feed where employees can post photos, comments and highlights in real time. This digital feed is showcased throughout the event

How to execute: Use the social media aggregation tool or an dedicated device engagement tool like DeadSimpleChat

Encourage participation by hosting mini challenges for example: 1. Best team selfie or the funniest moment ever etc. distribute prices based on the winners

Why it works: You can blend the physical and digital interaction, a social wall keeps attendees engaged encourages cross team conversations and creates dynamic narrative for the event. It also creates sharable content for the employer branding

Engaging Themed & Seasonal Celebrations

Section 2 Engaging Themed & Seasonal Celebrations

Holiday Gift Bags & Appreciation Packs

What it is: Curated gift boxes that are filled with thoughtful items. These range from branded merchandise to locally sourced treats.

How to execute: Personalize the gift items to reflect your company culture and you can also include a handwritten letter from the management. These gifts can be given out at company gathering or mail them to remote workers

Why it works: A tangible gesture of appreciation that boosts morale and sends a message to the employees that the company cares for them and recognizes their work and them

Secret Santa Style Gift Exchange

What it is: This is a holiday tradition where team mates anonymously exchange gifts and often there is a price limit to keep the event lighthearted and accessible

How to execute: Assign a budget and select 'Secret Santa' pairs randomly, you can do this using an app or draw

Encourage the employees to get creative and personal for example use a favourite book and hobby related item.

Why it works: It creates a friendly anticipation and employees learns about their team mates interests thus forging stronger relationships

Ugly Sweater or Costume Contest

What it is: A playful dress up event where employees can showcase their customers or sweaters

How to execute: Announce a select day, and give out prizes based on categories like "Most creative" or "funniest". Document the fun on your company's internal communications platform

Why it works: This humanizes the workplace interactions and improves team cohesion. Employees come out of their usual roles

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Holiday Baking Contest

What it is: A friendly baking contest where participants bring homemade cookies, cake, pastries and cultural sweets to be sampled and judged by other team mates

How to execute: Set up tasting stations and provide the voting sheets. Consider awards such as "Best People's Choice", "Most Creative" and "Best cultural twist"

Why it works: Food carries cultural significance and has personal stories associated with it. Sharing the food bridges cultural divide, encourages conversation and let employees share their cultural heritage all the while having fun

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Casino Night

What it is: A night filled with classic casino games such as poker, blackjack, roulette and others. This is played with fun money or token not real cash

How to execute: Hire a professional event service and setup tables with trained dealers. Offer drinks like mocktails, finger foods and a raffle prizes. Emphasize that it is about socializing and not gambling.

Why it works: The thrill of a friendly wager encourages mingling, banter and networking.Employees from different departs or teams often end up side by side sharing laughs and forming new connections

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Masquerade Ball

What it is: A formal, elegant event where attendees wear masks and evening attire thus embracing an air of mystery and sophistication

How to execute: Select a stylish venue or hall, play soft music or a curated playlist and offer a photo booth to capture the moment.

Ask guests to come to the party wearing masks and have a thematic decor like candlelight tables and ornate centrepieces. offer dinner or lunch.

Why it works: It breaks the day to day monotony and adds a sense of grandeur and elegance

Employees see each other in a more refined setting, which can improve the company image both internally and externally.

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Sci-Fi Extravaganza

What it is: A futuristic themed event inspired by popular science, you can think of decor, costumes and activities that are centred on innovation and imagination

How to execute: Incorporate AR/VR experiences, Sci-fi Trivia, holographic projections and space themed snacks.

Encourage the participants to dress like their favourite sci-fi character

Why it works: It celebrates creativity, forward thinking and exploration and qualities that translate to more creativity at work.

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Roaring 20S Gala

What it is: A nostalgic event that portrays the glamour and style of the 1920s jazz age, complete with vintage attire, music and decor.

How to execute: Hire a band or play the era appropriate music, serve classic cocktails and use ArtDeco accents for ambience

Why it works: Stepping into another era lets employees sept out of their corporate personas. It helps with storytelling and creates memories and bonds between colleagues

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Around the World Cultural Fair

What it is: A celebration of global diversity where employees showcase dishes, music and traditions from their cultural backgrounds or places that these employees have visited

How to execute: Set up different country themed booths, invite employees to share short presentations and create short events such as 'passports' that attendees to collect stamps as they sample different experiences

Why it works: Emphasizing the cultural exchange between broadens everyone's horizons. It fosters empathy and diversity within your employees

As team members learn about each other backgrounds and as they build deeper more respectful relationships

Virtual & Hybrid Event Innovations

Section 3: Virtual & Hybrid Event Innovations

The new world of work increasingly span geographic locations and time zones. Embracing a virtual and hybrid event format makes sure that every voice is heard and every mile stone is celebrated

Essential Tool: DeadSimpleChat

Virtual Trivia Tournament

What it is: A live and online quiz where team members can login from anywhere in the world to compete by answering fun, company related and general knowledge based questions

How to execute: Use the interactive platforms like DeadSimpleChat. Host multiple rounds with different difficult levels and consider some themed categories that are related to your company and industry

Why it works: A virtual crowd pleaser, trivia encourages friendly banter, strengthens interpersonal relationships and offers a level playing field where everyone can contribute

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Virtual Wine tasting

What it is: A guided online wine tasting touring lead by a professional. Here participants sample a pre-delivered wine kits while learning about flavours and pairing tips

How to execute: Partner with a reputable winery or a wine subscription service to send kits to the team members in advance

Host a session on a video platform and encourage a Q&A on a chat platform like DeadSimpleChat

Why it works: It is a sophisticated social experience that brings a sense of luxury and learning to remote employees. Participants bond over shared experiences and can discuss cultural elements

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Virtual award Ceremony

What it is: A live stream award show where we are celebrating individual achievements, project milestones and team successes. All of this is done remotely

How to execute: Use a live streaming service and chat for virtual event software such as DeadSimpleChat Send digital award badges or mail physical trophies to winners

Why it works: recognizing the good work publicly often boosts morale, retention and company loyalty. A virtual format means the best performer receives the spotlight no matter where he/she is located

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Virtual Scavenger Hunt

What it is: An online challenge where the participants solve a riddle, find digital clues and snap photos or screenshots in order to collect the proof.

How to execute: Create a list of accessible tasks that can be shared via a shared document like google sheets. Track progress using a track board or leaderboard. Incorporate company trivia or industry trends to make it relevant to your audience

Why it works: Gamification of the event brings excitement and camaraderie to dispersed teams. It encourages people to solve problems creatively and break the monotony of remote work

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Online Cooking classes

What it is: A virtual cooking class for your employees lead by a professional chef, guiding participants through preparing a dish together in real time

How to execute: Create a recipe and circulate it before hand. During the live session encourage employee to ask questions and share personal twits and cultural variations. Record the class for those who are unable to attend

Why it works: Food is something that connects us all around the world. A shared cooking experience humanizes team mates and fosters deeper understanding, culinary exploration and lighter more authentic conversations

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Virtual Hackathon or Coding Challenge

What it is: A time bound online innovative sprint, where teams that are tech savvy tackle a problem statement or build software

How to execute: Provide a platform for code collaboration and set clear and brief judging criteria, offer mentorship sessions or guest speakers. End with a virtual demo day to showcase the results

Why it works: By promoting hands-on learning and tapping into the employees inventive spirit you can drive skill development

It signals a culture of innovation in the company and transcends geographical barriers.

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Digital Trade Show or Expo

What it is: A virtual exhibition with booths and product demos, webinars and networking lounges that replicate in person trade show

How to execute: Use a virtual platform like DeadSimpleChat with customizable booths and pre recorded demos. Have the chat networking options. Offer exclusive discounts and downloadable content

Why it works: It removes the geographical barriers and attracts a global audience without travel costs. It is scalable, measurable and can broaden your market research. Thus making it an efficient B2B marketing tool

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Virtual Career Fair

What it is: An online recruitment event that connects potential candidates with HR representatives and team leads in an virtual environment

How to execute: You can partner with a virtual job fair platform, create company booth, schedule live Q&A sessions with chat and video calling and allow attendees to send in the resumes digitally

Why it works: You can tap the world talent and not be bound by geographical limitations. Attracting diverse talent pools and demonstrating your organizations adaptability.

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Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) Product Demos

What it is: This is an immersive product demonstration where attendees can interact with 3D models, You can overlay the product features in their own space and engage in virtual showrooms

How to execute: Develop and AR or VR compatible application or you can create a website as well leverage existing platforms for this.

Provide a live walkthrough and then allow the attendees to explore the product on their own pace

Why it works: This is a high impact storytelling technique. AR demos make the complex product more tangible, thus boosting the understanding of the product and making the decision making easier.

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Digital concert and entertainment night

What it is: A live streamed performance - A comedy night or a dance show or a live singing concert. This is broadcast to employees wherever in the world they are

How to execute: Partner with local artists and emerging talents. Offer interactive features such as live polling and chat and song requests. Use platforms like DeadSimpleChat for this

Why it works: Cultural experiences create a sense of fun among employees. Allowing them to bond over a concert or a show. It provides stress relief that helps maintain a positive and connected company atmosphere

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Section 4 Thought Leadership & Educational Events

Leadership Development Workshops

What it is: Intensive training sessions that focus on leadership skills such as strategic decision making, conflict resolution and emotional intelligence

How to execute: Partner with experienced executive coaches, trainers etc. Offer a mix of lectures, role playing exercise and personalized feedbacks

Why it works: Leadership is a skill that is useful in the long term. By cultivating strong leaders internally, you can ensure improved morale, team guidance and more resilient organization

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Education Lunch and Learn Sessions

What it is: These are small informal sessions which are held over lunch, where an expert or a guest speaker shares insights, trends and practical skills that are relevant to the team field

How to execute: Schedule a recurring days each month. Provide lunch and keep sessions concise 30 - 45 mins. Have Q&A sessions using chat like DeadSimpleChat . Record sessions for different time zones or remote employees

Why it works: Lunch and learn are easy to implement and sustain. These turn everyday downtime into a learning experience. These reinforce continuous learning without overwhelming schedules

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Industry conference or Trade show presence

What it is: here you attend a large scale industry conference as a tram or host a branded booth or present on the industry panel

How to execute: Identify the key industry conferences or trade shows that align with your market segments

Invest in eye catching booth design prepare literature and send knowledge representatives. Offer freebies, demos and exclusive previews to attract potential customers

Why it works: Visibility at market and industry trade shows makes customers remember your brand. Networking with peers, meeting potential clients and keeping up with market trends.

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Tech Fair

What it is: A mini expo that shows emerging technologies, prototypes and projects that are relevant to your company's future

How to execute: Invite tech vendors, university research labs and internal innovation teams to setup booths

Include some short talks, product pitches and provide space for hands on experimentation and demos

Why it works: A tech fair gives simulates your team's imagination and gives a signal that you are committed to staying ahead of the curve.

Employees gain exposure to new tools, get new ideas and these might involve into market leading solutions

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Expert Led Panel Discussions

What it is: A moderated conversation that has industry thought leaders, season executives and subject matter experts who debate trends, challenges and best practices

How to execute: Curate a balanced panel mixing internal and external voices. You can host it in house or live stream it as well . Streaming the event also allows remote audiences to post questions via chat software like DeadSimpleChat

Why it works: Hearing multiple perspectives from industry leaders opens up critical thinking and provides new knowledge to your employees and viewers

Employees can learn new things about your industry and improve their judgment and adaptability

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Section 5: Brand Showcases & Product Launches

In person Launch party

What it is: A physical gathering at a reputed venue where people gather to get a hands on introduction to a new product launch or a service launch

How to execute: Choose a stylish venue that will match your company and brand image. Offer product demos and allow participants to see the trail features

Why it works: Face to face interactions and ambience create an environment of trust, excitement and emotional engagement. Customer appreciate the authenticity and clarity of see and feeling the product in real time

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Interactive Online Demo

What it is: A virtual platform where customers can experience the product remotely. For example a webinar or a website where customers can get a feel for the product

How to execute: Develop a good looking website and do a webinar, guided walk through and leverage technologies like AR to give the website visitors a feel for the product. Offer chat interactions and invite customers to provide feedback in real time. You can use chat software alongside the webinar such as DeadSimpleChat

Why it works: Scalable and world all around the world. An online demo can cater to a global audience leading to faster adoption

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Collaborate Launch with Influencers

What it is: This is a partnership with industry influencers and thought leaders who can share their endorsements of your company to their audiences.

How to execute: Identify credible influencers who can endorse your product and whose audiences better align with your target market

You can run a livestream or do a Q&A session and encourage them to create content on their social feed for your product or service

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Exclusive VIP Preview Event

What it is: A private invite only session where the top customers and internal stakeholders receive a first look and hands on experience before the product is officially launched

How to execute: Host the event at a premium location like an expensive hotel or a tech savvy innovation centre

Provide one to one demos and light refreshments, special perks and early discounts

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Product showcase at industry conference

What it is: A strategic presentation, a booth, or a demo slot at a relevant industry conference where you can showcase your product or service.

Here you can have brochures, mini workshops, and product demos. Highlight the features and competitive advantages of your product.

How to execute: Reserve a booth spot at an industry conference, create flyers, and set up AR VR gadgets if it suits your product and brand image.

Highlight distinct features and competitive advantages of your product.

Why it works: Industry events have potential customers and decision makers present. Here you can put your product or service in front of them. Standing out at these conferences builds credibility and drives interest in potential customers

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Charity GalaCharity Gala

What it is: A formal fundraising event that has a sit-down dinner and entertainment, keynote speakers, and a spotlighted cause.

How to execute: Choose a reputable charity to partner with and that aligns best with your brand. Have a good venue and hire event planners, invite top customers, community leaders, and media outlets.

Offer silent auctions and special performances to encourage donations.

Why it works: High-profile charity events raise significant amounts for your chosen cause and also associate your brand with elegance, care, and commitment to society.

These also create memorable stories that stakeholders associate with your brand long after the event is over.

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Charity Run/ Walk or Fitness Challenge

What it is: A health-oriented fundraising challenge where employees and community members do something healthy in order to raise funds for a cause.

This could be anything from walking, running, cycling, swimming, etc., to raise money for the cause.

How to execute: You can partner with local fitness organizations and charity non-profits. Set up fundraising goals and encourage employees to form teams.

Offer branded t-shirts, medals, and other goodies on event day.

Why it works: It aligns well with the well-being philosophy. It strengthens team spirit and promotes a healthy lifestyle along with supporting a worthy cause.

This also engages community members who share similar values.

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Auction night

What it is: A fun and competitive event where the participants bid on donated items or experiences, with the proceeds going towards a non-profit organization.

How to execute: Gather some items that can be auctioned; these could range from gift baskets to tech gadgets and VIP experiences.

Use a professional auctioneer or do a silent auction. Provide refreshments and highlight the stories of people who would benefit from the charity.

Why it works: Donating to a charity and getting something in return for a good cause is a good idea. It turns out to be an enjoyable expeience.

You can also tap into the excitement of a friendly compitition and allow employees to be directly connected to the contributions

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Community Clean Up day

What it is: A hands on initiative where your employees volenteer to clean up a public place like a park, beaches, river or community center

How to execute: Coordinate with local authorities and environmental groups to identify and clean up sites. Provide supplies such as gloves, tools and trash bags and implement safety guidelines

Why it works: A tangible and visible improvement to the local environment will leave your employees feeling proud. It also shows the community at large that your organization is a good corporate citizen and invests and cares for the environment it operates in.

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DIY workshop series for charity

What it is: Skill building sessions where employees create items that an be donated to homeless shelter, hospitals and orphanages or other non profits.

Items could include blankets, care packages and craft projects.

How to execute: Invite artisans and non profit representatives to lead workshops

Provide necessary supplies to employees and allow them to work in small teams creating items. Deliver the finished items to organizations

Why it works: Employees can see the benefits that their work is having on the society, understand the story behind the people that they are helping. Employees also appriciate the effort that the company is putting.

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Section 7 Community Engagement & Cultural Experiences

Neibourhood Potluck Dinner

What it is: This is casual bring a dish event where employees, local residents and community leaders, share homemade meals and personal stories

How to execute: Secure a comfortable and easy to access venue like a community hall or park or even your own office. Then invite the participants to bring home made food that reflect their cultural backgrounds and personal favorites

You can also have some family friendly entertainment like music or simple games etc

Why it works: Breaking the bread together creates a sense of wormth and satisfaction. You can also help connect employees with each other at an authentic level

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Cultural Fair

What it is: A mini festival where employees showcase international traditions and have food stalls and craft demos with live music and dance performances

How to execute: Invite local organizations and your employees to set up booths from different places of the world and heritages.

Facilitate interactive elements like mini lessons, craft workshops, etc., and have food from different areas of the world available to try.

Why it works: Highlights the richness of the global traditions and broadens the perspectives and promotes inclusion among the employees.

Everyone walks aways with greater cultural awareness and your brand gains a reputation for diversity and inclusion

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Outdoor movie night

What it is: This is a friendly gathering where your employees can enjoy a film under the stars with popcorn and blankets

How to execute: Coordinate with a local outdoor movie theather and select a family friendly and happy go lucky flim. Setup food trucks for snacks and have fun

Why it works: Outdoor movie nights have nostalgia and comfort element built into them. You can create a welcoming environment for your employees and position your company as a caring organization.

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9 Types of Virtual Events: Engagement in the Digital Age

Dead Simple Chat Team — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 16:59:02 GMT

In the today's business environment, there is a shift towards digital interactions.

This is primarily driven by the advancements in technology and a global push towards connectivity with considerations towards the geographical limitations

Virtual events have become common because they help businesses to enagage with global audiences.

The imporatnce of real time communication in virutal events cannot be overstated

Real time enagement fosters a feel of community engagement, feedback among the attendees

By integrating real time engagement tools like virtual events chat, you can leverage higher levels of engagement and audience satisfaction similar to traditional in person events

Types of Virtual Events

Here are the different types of Virtual events

Webinars
Virtual Conferences
Online Workshops and Training Sessions
Virtual Trade Shows and Expos
Virtual Networking Events
Virtual Product Launches
Virtual Career Fairs
Virtual Fundraisers and Charity Events
Live Streaming Events
Bonus: Hybrid Events

Webinars

1. Webinars

Webinars are web based video conferencing events designed to educate the audiences on specific /perticular topics

The webinars are highly effective for::

Lead Generation
Thought Leadership
Audience Engagement

Focused presentations and workshops on Specific Topics

Genrally webinars are between 30 mins to an hour and center around a single presentation or a workshop by an expert or few experts.

Webinars address specific problems and challenges, present solutions and share insights in niche areas

These focused presentataions allows audiences to gain valuable knowledge and expertise in little amount of time.

2. Interactive Q & A Sessions to engage the audiences

An important aspect of successful webinar is real time audience interaction.

Presenters often incorporate live chats, polls and Q&A sessions in order to engage the audiences

You can use different tools to be able to engage with audience, one of the main tools is live chat for events, we recommend DeadSimpleChat for virtual events

The interaction not only keeps the audiences attentive but also provides immediate feedback to the presenters

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Virtual events vs traditional events

2. Virtual Conferences

Virutal conferences replicate the experience of in person live conferences in the digital world.

These conferences span multiple days and sessions and cater to a wide range of audiences.

Multi-session events featuring Keynotes Panels and Breakout Rooms

Virtual conferences offer different sessions that happen concurrently, this allows attendess to attended whatever sessions that suits their interests best.

There are keynote speeches and panel discussions happining at the same time.

2. Networking Opportunities through Virtual lounges and Chat rooms

Networking is an important aspect of conferences. Virtual lounges and chat rooms simulate the in-person discussions and informal interactions t

There are often themed virtual lounges available that simulate in-person interactions.

Audiences can join these lounges to discuss specific topics, have 1 to 1 meetings and engage in group chats.

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Hosting a Virtual Event with Engagement Tools

3. Online Workshops and Training Sessions

Online workshops and training sessions are also there.

These sessions often focus on skill development and professional growth, leveraging interactive technologies to enhance learning experience

Online Skill development with video and chat

There are sessions which often combine pre-recorded modules in combination with live instructions to provide a complete learning experience

Audiences / students then interact with the teachers or professionals using live chat, Q&A sessions, polls etc

The best tools for this interaction is DeadSimpleChat

With live sessions you can have real time feedback with and clarification, for this you need a real time chat solution like DeadSimpleChat

Virtual Trade Shows and Expos

4. Virtual Trade Shows and Expos

With Virtual trade shows and expos you get the exhibition hall online. This enables the companies to showcase their products and services to audiences all around the world with the constraints of space.

Virtual booths showcasing Products and services

Exhibitors can create virtual booths that have multimedia presentations, product or service demos, broucherss and even promotional videos

These booths are often customizable to suit company brand and logo thus allowing different brands to maintain their identity

Booths also have chat functionality where the attendees can chat with the exhibitors in the booth and even purchase products and services

If you are looking for a chat solution to add to your Virutal trade show or expo then DeadSimpleChat is the solution for you

Virtual Networking Events

5. Virtual Networking Events

Virtual Networking events are designed for networking between people.

These events use video conferencing and chat to network with different kinds of people professionally or on a personal level

Facilitating meeting between different professionals

There are many networking events for professional where people from the same professional come together to enhance their collective knowledge and also know other people in their profession

There are many inter-disciplinary networking events as well where people from different ancillary professions interact with each other, to form friendships and business relations that are mutually beneficial.

Virtual Product Launches

6. Virtual Product Launches

Virtual product launches are important events, in which companies can launch their new products into the world market.

These launches create buzz and excitement while aiming to reach a global audience

Live demo and product launces to a global audience

Companies use live video conferencing to showcase their product in real time. These comapnies can utilize techniques such as video presentations, 3 D renderings and interactive demos

audiences can also provide live feedback and a feeling of community and enthusiasm is created

Engaging audiences with live chats, Polls and Feedback sessions

Incorporating elements such as live chats, polls and feedback sessions during the launch keeps the audiences engaged

These features allow the audiences to provide instant feedback, ask questtions and feel involved in the event

Virtual Career Fairs

7. Virtual Career Fairs

Virtual career fairs connect the job seeks with the companies that are offering the jobs

Nowadays with remote jobs, companies willing to recruit talent from all around the globe and not just from their local area

Connecting the Employes with companies remotely

The employers can setup virtual booths where the company information can be displayed, corporate culture can be highlighted and also show what kind of job vacanccies they have along with job rquirements

Job seeks can potentially navigate to these booths to explore opportunitues and learn about the companies

The companies also get to choose from a wider net of job seeekers

8. Virtual Fundraisers and Charity Events

Virtual Fundraisers and charity events raise awarenedd and funds for their causes

This enables these charities to raise funds from across the globe allowing more people to participate and contribute to the cause

Online Charity, donation drives and virtual galas

Fundraising activities include virtual donation gathering, virtual galas and features such as live tracking of progress towards the donation goal

These events also eliminate geographical barriers, allowing more people to participate and controbute to the cause

Storytelling through multumedia in order to Inspire Contributions

Utilizing video and testimonials and interactive content, charities can tell their story to a lot of peple online

Emotional storytelling helps connect donors on a personal level, live acknowledgement of donations and real time feedback creates a sense of community and shared purpose in the audience

9. Live Streaming Events

Live Streaming events broadcast the content on the internet in real time. That is real time video is broadcast to thousands of viewers in real time

Broadcasting live performances, talks and events

Artists, speakers and organizations can use live broadcasts and live streaming to share concerts, keynote discussions workshops and award shows to broad audiences

High quality streaming with engagement tools such as chat ensures that the essence of excitement of the live event is provided to the audience effectively

Organizers can use chat to effectively increase engagement, conduct polls and create Q&A sessions to effectively enagage with the audience

One such chat tool that is perfect for live streaming is DeadSimpleChat

10. Bonus: Hybrid Events

Hybrid events combine online participation with in-person attendence. Thus giving a blend of both real and virtual experience

These offer benefits of both the worlds, providing organizers the opportunity to reach a wider audience with online and offering tangible benefits of in person face to face interactions

Seamless integration of both virtual and phycical components

Hybrid events are organized to ensure that both the virtual as well as in person audiences have a cohesive experience.

These could involve in sync schedules, shared content and interactive experiences with the goal to bridge the gap between online and in person interactions.

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Environment Variables in NodeJs: The complete Guide

Dead Simple Chat Team — Sat, 21 Sep 2024 10:21:00 GMT

In this article we are going to cover environment variables also known as env variables. These are basically key-value pair of data set that is stored in the operating system level

In this article we will learn about environment variables in NodeJs with examples

What are Environment variables
Why are env variables are important
Prerequisites for the project
Installing NodeJs and setting up a new Project
Initializing your first env variable with NodeJS
env variables in API calling / async tasks
env variables in Database operations / async tasks
Advanced env variable manipulation in Node JS: Encoding, Validation and type conversion
Secrets management and Security Best Practices with examples
Common Pitfalls and how to avoid them
Conclusion

Environment Variables

Environment variables are a key-value pair data set that are avaiable at the operating system level. These data set are available in all major operating system command line shells Windows, Mac and Linux

Why are env variable important?

Separation of concerns
Security
Portability
Scalability
Compatibility
Interoperability

Understanding Environment Variables

Operating System: This is where the Environment variables are stored
Node Js runtime: Interacts with the operating system in order to obtain environment variables
Your App Code: Interacts with the process.env to get the environment variables

Prerequisites for this Project

In this project we are going to assume the following

Basic knowledge of NodeJs
Basic Knowledge of JavaScript
Some knowledge of Backend development

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meme

Installing Node and setting up the project

These are different methods of installing NodeJS on your machine. You can go to the node official website and download a version from there

Let us consider installing nodejs in a linux operating system prefrably ubuntu

Step 1: Open your terminal

Step 2: Use curl or wget script below to install nvm using the nvm git repository. run the script to install the nvm

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.3/install.sh | bash
# OR
wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.3/install.sh | bash

download and install nvm

Step 3: Close and re-open your terminal and run the following to apply the script

export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"

set

Step 4: Confirm Installation

You can confirm that NVM has been installed on your system by running the following command

nvm --version

Step 5: Installing Node

type the below command to install the latest version of node

nvm install latest

nvm install --lts

Step 6: Setting the default version

you can set a default version of node to be used across your system by using the following command

nvm alias default 20.8.0

Step 7: Checking if node is installed

you can type the below command to check if the node is installed on your system

node -v # tells you the current version of node on your system. In our case it is 20.8.0

checking the node version

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Initializing the project

Now, that we have installed the node on our machine. Let us create a new project where we will be using the env variable

create a new directory and name it env-demo and cd into the directory

mkdir env-demo
cd env-demo

creating the env-demo

Now, that we have created the folder and cd into it. Type the below command to initalize a new project and fill out the fields as you see fit

npm init

package name: (env-demo) 
version: (1.0.0) 
description: 
entry point: (index.js) 
test command: 
git repository: 
keywords: 
author: 
license: (ISC)

npm init options

this will create a package.json file for you that looks something like this:

{
  "name": "env-demo",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC"
}

package.json

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meme

Initializing your first env variable: Step By Step

Step 1: Install the dotenv package

Now that you have initialized the project in the above section and created a package.json file. In your terminal type the below command to install the node dotenv package that is used to create env files

npm install dotenv --save

This will install the dotenv package and save it as a dependency in your package.json file. that should look something like this

{
  "name": "env-demo",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "dependencies": {
    "dotenv": "^16.3.1"
  }
}

package.json

Step 2 Create the .env file

In your root folder create a new file and name it .env.
Open your .env file in your text editor and create some key-value pairs. These are your environment variable. I have created some for your reference below

DATABASE_URL=sample-database-url
PORT=3000
SECRET_KEY=mysecretkey

sample env variables

Step 3 Load and read the env variables

In your root folder create an index.js file and then open your terminal and type the below command to install express js.

npm install express --save

This installs expressjs and saves it as a dependency in your package.json file, your package,json looks like this

{
  "name": "env-demo",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "dependencies": {
    "dotenv": "^16.3.1",
    "express": "^4.18.2"
  }
}

and your project structure looks like this

project structure

Now, open your index.js file and type the below command to start a simple web server.

const express = require('express');
const app = express();
const port = 4000;  // defaults to 4000

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
    res.send('Hello World!')
  })

app.listen(port, () => {
  console.log(`Server running on http://localhost:${port}/`);
});

simple web server with expressjs

run the code with

node index.js

and go to localhost://4000 to get the hello world

Hello world on localhost 4000

meme

loading and reading the .env file

Now that we have the server running let us read the .env file that we created in the previous step and load the port details from the .env file

Open the index.js file and require the dotenv library there

require('dotenv').config()

require the dotenv library

now, you can access the .env file using the process.env. Let us use the process.env to access the port number in our index.js file

const express = require('express');
require('dotenv').config()
const app = express();
const port = process.env.PORT || 4000;  // Read from .env if not available then defaults to 4000

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
    res.send('Hello World!')
  })

app.listen(port, () => {
  console.log(`Server running on http://localhost:${port}/`);
});

index.js

Now let us restart the server and go to localhost://3000 . Instead of running at 4000 our server is now running on port 3000 which it took from the .env file

you can also see this in the console

server now running on port 3000

You have now successfully created and saved the env file on your machine

As another example you can access the DATABASE_URL like so

const dbUrl = process.env.DATABASE_URL;
// Use dbUrl to connect to your database

another example

Here are all the files

index.js

const express = require('express');
require('dotenv').config()
const app = express();
const port = process.env.PORT || 4000;  // Read from .env if not available then defaults to 4000

app.get('/', (req, res) => {
    res.send('Hello World!')
  })

app.listen(port, () => {
  console.log(`Server running on http://localhost:${port}/`);
});

index.js

package.json

{
  "name": "env-demo",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "dependencies": {
    "dotenv": "^16.3.1",
    "express": "^4.18.2"
  }
}

package.json

.env

DATABASE_URL=sample-database-url
PORT=3000
SECRET_KEY=mysecretkey

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How to use env variables in async tasks

In this section we are going to discuss about how env variables can be used in async tasks like calling an API or database operations

Env variables are especially important in these tasks, because they can be used to store credentials and endpoints securely

Also, these variables can be automated because these change between different environment such as development, staging and production.

Step 1 Setting up the env variables

open your .env file and edit it like this

API_URL=https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/todos/1
API_KEY=sfjks4325
PORT=3000

.env file

Step 2 using async / await with env variables

Next, install the axios library to make calls to the remote server like

npm install axios --save

this will install the axios and save it as a dependency in your package.json file

the package.json file should look something like this

{
  "name": "env-demo",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC",
  "dependencies": {
    "axios": "^1.5.1",
    "dotenv": "^16.3.1",
    "express": "^4.18.2"
  }
}

package.json

Next use the axios to make calls to the jsonplaceholder website and log them to the console

Type this code in your index.js file

const express = require('express');
require('dotenv').config();
const axios = require('axios');
const app = express();
const port = process.env.PORT || 4000;  // Read from .env if not available then defaults to 4000

const fetchData = async () => {
  const url = process.env.API_URL;
  const apiKey = process.env.API_KEY;
  
  try {
    const response = await axios.get(url, {
      headers: { 'Authorization': `Bearer ${apiKey}` }
    });
    console.log(response.data);
  } catch (error) {
    console.error(`Error fetching data: ${error}`);
  }
};


app.get('/', (req, res) => {
  fetchData()
    res.send('Hello World!')
  })

app.listen(port, () => {
  console.log(`Server running on http://localhost:${port}/`);
});

index.js

What are we doing here:

We are importing the modules like express, dotenv, axios
Then we are initalizing the app and the port using the env variables
then we are creating the async function called const fetchData = async ()=> (...)
In this function we are using the url and the apiKey from the .env file. Though I have to mention you do not need apiKey to call the jsonplaceholder website. I have just put that key there for demo purposes
we are logging the data to the console
We are calling the fetchData() method on the get route. So, everytime someone goes to the / the method gets called and the data gets logged to the console.

Using Async/await with env variables in Database operations

Let us look at another example, this time we are going to do database operations with env variables

step 1 set up the env variables

Open the .env file in your text editor and type the following

Copy code
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_PORT=5432
DB_NAME=mydatabase
DB_USER=username
DB_PASSWORD=password

.env file

Step 2 Install the pg library

next step is to install the pg library like so

npm install pg --save

Step 3 Connect to the database and make the async query with .env file

write the following code to connect to the database and use the .env credentials that we just created

const { Pool } = require('pg');
require('dotenv').config();

const pool = new Pool({
  host: process.env.DB_HOST,
  port: process.env.DB_PORT,
  database: process.env.DB_NAME,
  user: process.env.DB_USER,
  password: process.env.DB_PASSWORD
});

const fetchUsers = async () => {
  try {
    const res = await pool.query('SELECT * FROM users');
    console.log(res.rows);
  } catch (err) {
    console.error(`Error fetching users: ${err}`);
  }
};

fetchUsers();

index.js

we are not integrating this example into our regular codebase because it is an outlier and will not be useful further down the line in our tutorial

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Advanced env variable manipulation in Node JS: Encoding, Validation and type conversion

There is more to env variable than just reading and storing them. With advanced env variable manupulation we are going to learn about

Encoding
Validation and
Type conversion

1. Encoding:

Encoding is used for various purposes in environment variables. This could be used for security puposes. The most popular type of encoding is done using the base64

Encoding

const buffer = Buffer.from('This is a secret', 'utf-8');
const encodedData = buffer.toString('base64');
console.log(`Encoded: ${encodedData}`);

encoding

Decoding:

const decodedData = Buffer.from(encodedData, 'base64').toString('utf-8');
console.log(`Decoded: ${decodedData}`);

2. Validation

validation is used to check whether the code is valid or not. for example the url that you are going to use is valid url or not etc

or as in this example we are checking whether the port number is within the specified range or not

const validatePort = (port) => {
  const parsedPort = parseInt(port, 10);
  if (isNaN(parsedPort) || parsedPort < 1024 || parsedPort > 65535) {
    throw new Error('Invalid port number');
  }
  return parsedPort;
};

const port = validatePort(process.env.PORT);

3. Type conversion

env variables are always on the type : string. If often you need to use other data types as well such as int or booleans. Here type conversion helps

Integer example

const isProduction = process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production';
const retries = parseInt(process.env.RETRIES, 10) || 3;

Boolean example

const shouldLog = process.env.SHOULD_LOG === 'true';

Combination example

Here is an example combining all the advanced env manipulation available in the env variables

// Encoding and decoding
const apiKey = Buffer.from(process.env.API_KEY || '', 'base64').toString('utf-8');

// Validation
if (apiKey.length !== 32) {
  throw new Error('Invalid API key length');
}

// Type conversion
const maxUsers = parseInt(process.env.MAX_USERS, 10);
if (isNaN(maxUsers)) {
  throw new Error('MAX_USERS must be an integer');
}

advanced manipulation in env

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Secrets Management and Security Best Practices with examples

In this section we are going to learn about secrets management and best practices with examples. Here are the steps that you can take to secure the env variable along with their examples

1. Never commit the `.env` files

Always ensure that the .env files are in the gitignore so they are never commited to the git repository

# Ignore dotenv environment variables file
.env

2. Hashing password

always hash the passwords, storing the passwords as plain text is a bad practice. You can use libraries like bcryt and others to hash the passwords

const bcrypt = require('bcrypt');
const saltRounds = 10;

async function hashPassword(plainPassword) {
  const hash = await bcrypt.hash(plainPassword, saltRounds);
  return hash;
}

hashing passwords example

3. Encoding the env variables

As a security measure always encode the secrets, the secrets are usually base-64 encoded

const buffer = Buffer.from(process.env.MY_SECRET, 'base64');
const decodedSecret = buffer.toString('utf-8');

4. Centralized secrets management

for large projects you can consider centralized secrets management services like hashicorp vault, AWS secrets manager and others

These offer advanced features like secret rotation, automated lease and rotation and audit logging

here is an example with node vault

const vault = require("node-vault")({
  endpoint: "https://vault-endpoint",
  token: process.env.VAULT_TOKEN,
});

async function getDatabaseCreds() {
  const data = await vault.read("path/to/secret");
  return {
    user: data.data.username,
    password: data.data.password,
  };
}

5. Least privilege principle

Always follow the principle of least privilege. The api which does not require write credentials should never be given write privileges

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Common Pitfalls and How to avoid them

Hardcoding Sensitive information
Lack of validation
Ignoring Environments
Inadequate security
Poor Documentation
Fallback defaults

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You might be interested in some of our other articles

Conclusion

In this article we learned about env variable and how to use them in NodeJs the complete guide

We have covered the important topics related to env management in NodeJs and this should be enough for most of the use-cases for env variables management in Node js apps

I hope you liked the article and thank you for reading

memo vs useMemo in React

Dead Simple Chat Team — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 14:02:00 GMT

In this blog post, we will look at the memo and useMemo in React. We will do a deep dive into these performance optimization options offered by React and look at their difference and see in what cases memo and useMemo should be used.

What is `memo` in React?

memo is a Higher Order Component in React (If you want to learn about HOCs you can check out our detailed guide on HOC in React) that prevents the re-rendering of the component if its props are unchanged.

How memo works under the hood

Here is how the react memo works under the hood

Component wrapping

When you wrap any component with React.memo it creates a new component that keeps track of the previous props

const MemoizedComponent = React.memo(MyComponent);

2. Shallow prop comparison

When ever there is a component render on the screen, the react.memo does a shallow comparison between previous props and the new props

Primitive types: for preimitive types like Strings and numbers it just directly compares their values with the previous values
Complex types: for complex types the react.render compares thir references. Complex types include Objects and Arrays and functions

3. Deciding to render

Props are unchanged:

If the props are unchanged from the previous props, the react.memo does not render the component again thus saving precious resources

Props Changed

If the props are changed then only the react.memo re renders the component on the screen

What is `useMemo` in React?

useMemo is a React Hook, that caches the result of a computationally expensive function between re-renders and allows to trigger the method only when the method dependencies changes.

React `memo` in Action

Let's look at an example under React memo and how we can use it to optimize our components.

import { useEffect, useState } from "react";

const ChildComponent = () => {
  console.log("Child re-rendered");
  return I am a Child Componenet.;
};

export default function App() {
  const [count, setCount] = useState(0);

  useEffect(() => {
    const interval = setInterval(() => {
      setCount((prevCount) => prevCount + 1);
    }, 1000);

    return () => {
      clearInterval(interval);
    };
  }, []);

  return (
    
      Count: {count}
      
    
  );
}

If you look at the example above, we have created a parent component called as App component.

In the App component we are running a setInterval and increment the count value by 1 every second.

If we run this code, you will see "Child re-rendered" continuously printed on the console.

It is because each time the count is updated, the App component is redrawn, thus all the child components are also re-drawn.

0:00

To prevent this we can use the memo HOC to create a memoized version of our ChildComponent. As our ChildComponents do not accept any props it is will not be redrawn each time the App component is updated.

Here is the memoized version of our using React Memo:

import { memo, useEffect, useState } from "react";

const ChildComponent = () => {
  console.log("Child re-rendered");
  return I am a Child Component.;
};

const MemoizedChild = memo(ChildComponent);

export default function App() {
  const [count, setCount] = useState(0);

  useEffect(() => {
    const interval = setInterval(() => {
      setCount((prevCount) => prevCount + 1);
    }, 1000);

    return () => {
      clearInterval(interval);
    };
  }, []);

  return (
    
      Count: {count}
      
    
  );
}

0:00

When you will run this code, you can see "Child re-rendered" is printed only twice, and not every time the App component is updated.

But as you have noticed it is printed twice and not once, because memo is performance optimization and not a guarantee.

React will still re-render the memoized version of the component as it sees fit at regular intervals.

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React `useMemo` in Action

The useMemo hook is used to optimize the computationally expensive function, that you don't want to call unless the input to the function changes.

Do not use the useMemo hook to call async requests, for that you should use the useEffect hook.

Now let's look at an example of useMemo to better understand its working.

In the example below we have React component called as BlogWriter. The BlogWriter component allows the user enter a title of the blog post, and post body.

It then calculateTextStats method to compute the word count of the blog post body.

import React, { useState } from "react";

const calculateTextStats = (text) => {
  console.log("calculateTextStats called");

  const words = text.trim().length > 0 ? text.trim().split(/\s+/) : [];
  const characters = text.replace(/\s+/g, "").length;

  return {
    wordCount: words.length,
    characterCount: characters,
  };
};

const BlogWriter = () => {
  const [body, setBody] = useState("");
  const [title, setTitle] = useState("");
  const stats = calculateTextStats(body);

  return (
    
       setTitle(e.target.value)}
        placeholder="Post title"
      />
      

       setBody(e.target.value)}
        placeholder="Post Body"
      />
      <div>
        <p>Word count: {stats.wordCount}</p>
        <p>Character count: {stats.characterCount}</p>
      </div>
    </div>
  );
};

const App = () => {
  return (
    <div style={{ margin: "20px" }}>
      <h1>Create Post</h1>
      <BlogWriter />
    </div>
  );
};

export default App;
</code></pre><p>We have added a <code>console.log("calculateTextStats called");</code> statement in the <strong><code>calculateTextStats</code> </strong>method to print on the console each time the method is called.</p><p>When you will run this application, you will notice the "<strong>calculateTextStats called" </strong>will be printed on the console.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-video-card"><div class="kg-video-container"><div class="kg-video-overlay"><button class="kg-video-large-play-icon"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"><path d="M23.14 10.608 2.253.164A1.559 1.559 0 0 0 0 1.557v20.887a1.558 1.558 0 0 0 2.253 1.392L23.14 13.393a1.557 1.557 0 0 0 0-2.785Z"/></svg></button></div><div class="kg-video-player-container kg-video-hide"><div class="kg-video-player"><button class="kg-video-play-icon"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"><path d="M23.14 10.608 2.253.164A1.559 1.559 0 0 0 0 1.557v20.887a1.558 1.558 0 0 0 2.253 1.392L23.14 13.393a1.557 1.557 0 0 0 0-2.785Z"/></svg></button><button class="kg-video-pause-icon kg-video-hide"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"><rect x="3" y="1" width="7" height="22" rx="1.5" ry="1.5"/><rect x="14" y="1" width="7" height="22" rx="1.5" ry="1.5"/></svg></button><span class="kg-video-current-time">0:00</span><div class="kg-video-time">/<span class="kg-video-duration"></span></div><input type="range" class="kg-video-seek-slider" max="100" value="0"><button class="kg-video-playback-rate">1×</button><button class="kg-video-unmute-icon"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"><path d="M15.189 2.021a9.728 9.728 0 0 0-7.924 4.85.249.249 0 0 1-.221.133H5.25a3 3 0 0 0-3 3v2a3 3 0 0 0 3 3h1.794a.249.249 0 0 1 .221.133 9.73 9.73 0 0 0 7.924 4.85h.06a1 1 0 0 0 1-1V3.02a1 1 0 0 0-1.06-.998Z"/></svg></button><button class="kg-video-mute-icon kg-video-hide"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"><path d="M16.177 4.3a.248.248 0 0 0 .073-.176v-1.1a1 1 0 0 0-1.061-1 9.728 9.728 0 0 0-7.924 4.85.249.249 0 0 1-.221.133H5.25a3 3 0 0 0-3 3v2a3 3 0 0 0 3 3h.114a.251.251 0 0 0 .177-.073ZM23.707 1.706A1 1 0 0 0 22.293.292l-22 22a1 1 0 0 0 0 1.414l.009.009a1 1 0 0 0 1.405-.009l6.63-6.631A.251.251 0 0 1 8.515 17a.245.245 0 0 1 .177.075 10.081 10.081 0 0 0 6.5 2.92 1 1 0 0 0 1.061-1V9.266a.247.247 0 0 1 .073-.176Z"/></svg></button><input type="range" class="kg-video-volume-slider" max="100" value="100"></div></div></div></figure><p>We can optimize this function using the <code>useMemo</code> hook. By using the <code>useMemo</code> hook we make sure that the <strong><code>calculateTextStats</code> </strong>function is only called when the "Post Body" is updated.</p><p>To update our example to use the <code>useMemo</code> hook for optimization we just need to replace the code:</p><pre><code class="language-js">const stats = calculateTextStats(body);</code></pre><p>with </p><pre><code class="language-js">  const stats = useMemo(() => {
    return calculateTextStats(body);
  }, [body]);</code></pre><p>Here is the complete code example for reference:</p><pre><code class="language-js">import React, { useMemo, useState } from "react";

const calculateTextStats = (text) => {
  console.log("calculateTextStats called");

  const words = text.trim().length > 0 ? text.trim().split(/\s+/) : [];
  const characters = text.replace(/\s+/g, "").length;

  return {
    wordCount: words.length,
    characterCount: characters,
  };
};

const BlogWriter = () => {
  const [body, setBody] = useState("");
  const [title, setTitle] = useState("");

  const stats = useMemo(() => {
    return calculateTextStats(body);
  }, [body]);

  return (
    <div>
      <input
        style={{ marginBottom: "10px" }}
        type="text"
        value={title}
        onChange={(e) => setTitle(e.target.value)}
        placeholder="Post title"
      />
      <br />
      <textarea
        value={body}
        onChange={(e) => setBody(e.target.value)}
        placeholder="Post Body"
      />
      <div>
        <p>Word count: {stats.wordCount}</p>
        <p>Character count: {stats.characterCount}</p>
      </div>
    </div>
  );
};

const App = () => {
  return (
    <div style={{ margin: "20px" }}>
      <h1>Create Post</h1>
      <BlogWriter />
    </div>
  );
};

export default App;
</code></pre><p>As you can see in the demo now when we update the "Post title" now the "calculateTextStats called" message is not printed on the screen.</p><p>Only when we update the "Post Body" we can see the "calculateTextStats called" message being printed on the screen.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-video-card"><div class="kg-video-container"><div class="kg-video-overlay"><button class="kg-video-large-play-icon"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"><path d="M23.14 10.608 2.253.164A1.559 1.559 0 0 0 0 1.557v20.887a1.558 1.558 0 0 0 2.253 1.392L23.14 13.393a1.557 1.557 0 0 0 0-2.785Z"/></svg></button></div><div class="kg-video-player-container kg-video-hide"><div class="kg-video-player"><button class="kg-video-play-icon"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"><path d="M23.14 10.608 2.253.164A1.559 1.559 0 0 0 0 1.557v20.887a1.558 1.558 0 0 0 2.253 1.392L23.14 13.393a1.557 1.557 0 0 0 0-2.785Z"/></svg></button><button class="kg-video-pause-icon kg-video-hide"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"><rect x="3" y="1" width="7" height="22" rx="1.5" ry="1.5"/><rect x="14" y="1" width="7" height="22" rx="1.5" ry="1.5"/></svg></button><span class="kg-video-current-time">0:00</span><div class="kg-video-time">/<span class="kg-video-duration"></span></div><input type="range" class="kg-video-seek-slider" max="100" value="0"><button class="kg-video-playback-rate">1×</button><button class="kg-video-unmute-icon"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"><path d="M15.189 2.021a9.728 9.728 0 0 0-7.924 4.85.249.249 0 0 1-.221.133H5.25a3 3 0 0 0-3 3v2a3 3 0 0 0 3 3h1.794a.249.249 0 0 1 .221.133 9.73 9.73 0 0 0 7.924 4.85h.06a1 1 0 0 0 1-1V3.02a1 1 0 0 0-1.06-.998Z"/></svg></button><button class="kg-video-mute-icon kg-video-hide"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"><path d="M16.177 4.3a.248.248 0 0 0 .073-.176v-1.1a1 1 0 0 0-1.061-1 9.728 9.728 0 0 0-7.924 4.85.249.249 0 0 1-.221.133H5.25a3 3 0 0 0-3 3v2a3 3 0 0 0 3 3h.114a.251.251 0 0 0 .177-.073ZM23.707 1.706A1 1 0 0 0 22.293.292l-22 22a1 1 0 0 0 0 1.414l.009.009a1 1 0 0 0 1.405-.009l6.63-6.631A.251.251 0 0 1 8.515 17a.245.245 0 0 1 .177.075 10.081 10.081 0 0 0 6.5 2.92 1 1 0 0 0 1.061-1V9.266a.247.247 0 0 1 .073-.176Z"/></svg></button><input type="range" class="kg-video-volume-slider" max="100" value="100"></div></div></div></figure><p></p><h2 id="difference-between-memo-and-usememo">Difference between <code>memo</code> and <code>useMemo</code></h2><p>As we have seen with the above examples <code>memo</code> and <code>useMemo</code> have similar names, and different approaches, but both are used to optimize the React components.</p><p>The <code><strong>memo</strong></code>  is a higher-order component which is used to create an optimized version of a component that is re-rendered only when props change.</p><p>Whereas <code><strong>useMemo</strong></code><strong> </strong>is a hook which is used to cache the result of an expensive function inside a component, and only calls the expensive function when its dependencies change.</p><p>To summarize the difference, the <strong><code>useMemo</code></strong> is used to optimize the computationally expensive operations that run inside the component, whereas <code><strong>memo</strong></code><strong> </strong>is used to optimize the rendering of the component itself.</p><h2 id="when-usememo-should-be-used">When <code>useMemo</code> should be used?</h2><p>If your code runs fine without using <code>useMemo</code> then leave it as is. It is not a good idea to be premature optimizations.</p><p>But if you notice hangs or lags in your application. If you notice the UI becomes unresponsive then you can investigate the computationally expensive methods in your application, and optimize them using <code>useMemo</code>.</p><p>Here are some of the common scenarios that you can look for in your application to optimize using <code>useMemo</code></p><h3 id="cache-the-result-of-computationally-expensive-method">Cache the Result of Computationally Expensive Method</h3><p>You can cache the result of a computationally expensive method so that other UI interactions do not result in the execution of the method.</p><p>Check out the example below:   </p><pre><code class="language-js">import React, { useState, useMemo } from "react";

const doLargeCalculation = (num) => {
  let result = num;
  for (let i = 0; i < 100000000; i++) {
    result += Math.random();
  }
  return result.toFixed(2);
};

const LargeCalculationComponent = () => {
  const [input, setInput] = useState(0);
  const result = useMemo(() => doLargeCalculation(input), [input]);

  return (
    <div>
      <input placeholder="Do nothing.." type="text" />
      <br />

      <input
        type="number"
        value={input}
        onChange={(e) => setInput(+e.target.value)}
      />
      <p>Result: {result}</p>
    </div>
  );
};

const App = () => {
  return (
    <div style={{ margin: "20px" }}>
      <LargeCalculationComponent />
    </div>
  );
};

export default App;
</code></pre><p>Check the example above, here updating the text box with place holder will not result in the execution of the <strong>doLargeCalculation </strong>method.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"></figure><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><figcaption>UseMemo Caching mechanism</figcaption></figure><h3 id="caching-the-derived-state">Caching the Derived State</h3><p>If we want to cache the value computed using the derived state we can use the <code>useMemo</code> hook to prevent unnecessary calculations.</p><pre><code class="language-js">import React, { useState, useMemo } from "react";

const calculateTotal = (numbers) => {
  return numbers.reduce((acc, val) => acc + val, 0);
};

const AdderComponent = () => {
  const [numbers, setNumbers] = useState([]);
  const [input, setInput] = useState("");

  const total = useMemo(() => calculateTotal(numbers), [numbers]);

  const add = () => {
    setNumbers([...numbers, Number(input)]);
    setInput("");
  };

  return (
    <div>
      <input
        type="number"
        value={input}
        onChange={(e) => setInput(e.target.value)}
        placeholder="Input a number"
      />
      <button onClick={add}>Add</button>
      <p>Tape: {numbers.join(", ")}</p>
      <p>Total: {total}</p>
    </div>
  );
};

const App = () => {
  return (
    <div style={{ margin: "20px" }}>
      <AdderComponent />
    </div>
  );
};

export default App;
</code></pre><p> In the above code the <code>AdderComponent</code> acts like a tape calculator,  it pushed the new numbers into an array and then displays the total.</p><p>By using the <code>useMemo</code> hook on the <code>total</code> we ensure that the total calculation is only performed when the numbers array changes.  </p><p>This prevents unnecessary recalculation of the total  when the component re-renders for any reason. </p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card"></figure><p></p><h2 id="usememo-common-pitfalls"><code>useMemo</code> common pitfalls </h2><p><code>useMemo</code> is a powerful optimization tool, but you should be aware of some of the most common pitfalls when using <code>useMemo</code> in your applications:</p><ul><li><strong>Pre-mature Optimisation: </strong>Using <code>useMemo</code> in your application when it is not needed is the most common pitfall. This introduces unnecessary complexity in the code and might introduce some unintended behaviour in the application and hard-to-find bugs.</li><li><strong>Using <code>useMemo</code> on dependencies that change a lot: </strong>There is no benefit of using <code>useMemo</code> on dependencies that change a lot. Even with using <code>useMemo</code> if the dependencies change the recalculations would be performed. In these cases, you should not use <code>useMemo</code> as it does not result in any performance benefit. </li><li><strong>Using <code>useMemo</code> to handle side-effects:  </strong>Data fetching for storage or API, sending Ajax requests, and manually updating the DOM are all examples of side-effects, all these operations should be performed in the <code>useEffect</code> hook. The <code>useMemo</code> should only be used for synchronous operations, asynchronous operations should be handled in <code>useEffect</code> hook and combination with <code>useState</code>.</li></ul><figure class="kg-card kg-bookmark-card"><a class="kg-bookmark-container" href="https://deadsimplechat.com/javascript-chat-api-sdk"><div class="kg-bookmark-content"><div class="kg-bookmark-title">Javascript Chat API and SDK | DeadSimpleChat</div><div class="kg-bookmark-description">Easily add chat to your website or app within seconds. Pre-built chat with API and Javascript SDK | DeadSimpleChat.</div><div class="kg-bookmark-metadata"><span class="kg-bookmark-author">DeadSimpleChat</span></div></div><div class="kg-bookmark-thumbnail"></div></a></figure><h2 id="when-memo-should-be-used">When <code>memo</code> should be used?</h2><p>React <code>memo</code> should be used in cases where the component is re-render too often even though its props are unchanged.</p><h3 id="reducing-unnecessary-render-when-parent-component-update">Reducing unnecessary render when Parent Component update</h3><p>In a scenario where the parent component updates but the props of the child component are unchanged.</p><p>In this case, if we wrap the child component in <code>memo</code> then it would prevent the re-rendering of the child component unless the props of the child component also change.</p><p>We have seen an example of this in this blog post, but here is another example:</p><pre><code class="language-js">import React, { useState, memo } from "react";

const ChildComponent = memo((props) => {
  console.log("Rending Child Component");
  return <div>Counter: {props.count}</div>;
});

const ParentComponent = () => {
  const [count, setCount] = useState(0);
  const [toggle, setToggle] = useState(false);

  return (
    <div>
      <button onClick={() => setCount((prevCount) => prevCount + 1)}>
        Increment
      </button>

      <button onClick={() => setCount((prevCount) => prevCount - 1)}>
        Decrement
      </button>

      <button
        style={{ fontSize: toggle ? "40px" : "12px" }}
        onClick={() => setToggle((prevToggle) => !prevToggle)}
      >
        Toggle
      </button>
      <ChildComponent count={count} />
    </div>
  );
};

const App = () => {
  return (
    <div style={{ margin: "20px" }}>
      <ParentComponent />
    </div>
  );
};

export default App;
</code></pre><figure class="kg-card kg-video-card"><div class="kg-video-container"><div class="kg-video-overlay"><button class="kg-video-large-play-icon"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"><path d="M23.14 10.608 2.253.164A1.559 1.559 0 0 0 0 1.557v20.887a1.558 1.558 0 0 0 2.253 1.392L23.14 13.393a1.557 1.557 0 0 0 0-2.785Z"/></svg></button></div><div class="kg-video-player-container kg-video-hide"><div class="kg-video-player"><button class="kg-video-play-icon"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"><path d="M23.14 10.608 2.253.164A1.559 1.559 0 0 0 0 1.557v20.887a1.558 1.558 0 0 0 2.253 1.392L23.14 13.393a1.557 1.557 0 0 0 0-2.785Z"/></svg></button><button class="kg-video-pause-icon kg-video-hide"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"><rect x="3" y="1" width="7" height="22" rx="1.5" ry="1.5"/><rect x="14" y="1" width="7" height="22" rx="1.5" ry="1.5"/></svg></button><span class="kg-video-current-time">0:00</span><div class="kg-video-time">/<span class="kg-video-duration"></span></div><input type="range" class="kg-video-seek-slider" max="100" value="0"><button class="kg-video-playback-rate">1×</button><button class="kg-video-unmute-icon"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"><path d="M15.189 2.021a9.728 9.728 0 0 0-7.924 4.85.249.249 0 0 1-.221.133H5.25a3 3 0 0 0-3 3v2a3 3 0 0 0 3 3h1.794a.249.249 0 0 1 .221.133 9.73 9.73 0 0 0 7.924 4.85h.06a1 1 0 0 0 1-1V3.02a1 1 0 0 0-1.06-.998Z"/></svg></button><button class="kg-video-mute-icon kg-video-hide"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"><path d="M16.177 4.3a.248.248 0 0 0 .073-.176v-1.1a1 1 0 0 0-1.061-1 9.728 9.728 0 0 0-7.924 4.85.249.249 0 0 1-.221.133H5.25a3 3 0 0 0-3 3v2a3 3 0 0 0 3 3h.114a.251.251 0 0 0 .177-.073ZM23.707 1.706A1 1 0 0 0 22.293.292l-22 22a1 1 0 0 0 0 1.414l.009.009a1 1 0 0 0 1.405-.009l6.63-6.631A.251.251 0 0 1 8.515 17a.245.245 0 0 1 .177.075 10.081 10.081 0 0 0 6.5 2.92 1 1 0 0 0 1.061-1V9.266a.247.247 0 0 1 .073-.176Z"/></svg></button><input type="range" class="kg-video-volume-slider" max="100" value="100"></div></div></div></figure><p>In the above code, there are two state variables in the parent component, one is <code>count</code> and another one is <code>toggle</code>.</p><p>  <code>count</code> is passed as a prop to the child component, and we have memoized the child component, so it will only be re-rendered when its prop that is count changes.</p><p>The <code>ChildComponent</code> will not be re-rendered when the <code>toggle</code> state is updated.</p><h3 id="caching-lists">Caching Lists</h3><p>React <code>memo</code> can be used to cache the list items, when a list is frequently updated.</p><p>By using <code>memo</code> on the List Items you ensure that the entire list is not re-rendered when an item in the list is updated.</p><p>Let's look at an example:</p><pre><code class="language-js">import React, { useState, memo } from "react";

const TodoItem = memo(({ item }) => {
  console.log(`Rendering todo item: ${item}`);
  return <li>{item}</li>;
});

const TodoListComponent = () => {
  const [todos, setTodos] = useState(["Buy milk", "Buy eggs", "Drink milk"]);
  const [newTodo, setNewTodo] = useState("");

  const addTodo = () => {
    setTodos([...todos, newTodo]);
    setNewTodo("");
  };

  return (
    <div>
      <input
        type="text"
        value={newTodo}
        onChange={(e) => setNewTodo(e.target.value)}
      />
      <button onClick={addTodo}>Add Todo</button>
      <ul>
        {todos.map((item) => (
          <TodoItem key={item} item={item} />
        ))}
      </ul>
    </div>
  );
};

const App = () => {
  return (
    <div style={{ margin: "20px" }}>
      <TodoListComponent />
    </div>
  );
};

export default App;
</code></pre><p>In this example the <code>TodoListComponent</code> manages a list of todos. Each time todo is added a new <code>TodoItem</code> component is rendered on the screen.</p><p>By wrapping <code>useMemo</code> around the <code>TodoItem</code> component, when a new Todo is added to the the <code>todos</code> array, all the <code>TodoItems</code> are not re-drawn.</p><p>It is especially useful in cases where a large list of todo has to be drawn on the screen. Wrapping each individual item in <code>memo</code> we ensure only the Item that is being updated is redrawn.</p><figure class="kg-card kg-video-card"><div class="kg-video-container"><div class="kg-video-overlay"><button class="kg-video-large-play-icon"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"><path d="M23.14 10.608 2.253.164A1.559 1.559 0 0 0 0 1.557v20.887a1.558 1.558 0 0 0 2.253 1.392L23.14 13.393a1.557 1.557 0 0 0 0-2.785Z"/></svg></button></div><div class="kg-video-player-container kg-video-hide"><div class="kg-video-player"><button class="kg-video-play-icon"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"><path d="M23.14 10.608 2.253.164A1.559 1.559 0 0 0 0 1.557v20.887a1.558 1.558 0 0 0 2.253 1.392L23.14 13.393a1.557 1.557 0 0 0 0-2.785Z"/></svg></button><button class="kg-video-pause-icon kg-video-hide"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"><rect x="3" y="1" width="7" height="22" rx="1.5" ry="1.5"/><rect x="14" y="1" width="7" height="22" rx="1.5" ry="1.5"/></svg></button><span class="kg-video-current-time">0:00</span><div class="kg-video-time">/<span class="kg-video-duration"></span></div><input type="range" class="kg-video-seek-slider" max="100" value="0"><button class="kg-video-playback-rate">1×</button><button class="kg-video-unmute-icon"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"><path d="M15.189 2.021a9.728 9.728 0 0 0-7.924 4.85.249.249 0 0 1-.221.133H5.25a3 3 0 0 0-3 3v2a3 3 0 0 0 3 3h1.794a.249.249 0 0 1 .221.133 9.73 9.73 0 0 0 7.924 4.85h.06a1 1 0 0 0 1-1V3.02a1 1 0 0 0-1.06-.998Z"/></svg></button><button class="kg-video-mute-icon kg-video-hide"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewbox="0 0 24 24"><path d="M16.177 4.3a.248.248 0 0 0 .073-.176v-1.1a1 1 0 0 0-1.061-1 9.728 9.728 0 0 0-7.924 4.85.249.249 0 0 1-.221.133H5.25a3 3 0 0 0-3 3v2a3 3 0 0 0 3 3h.114a.251.251 0 0 0 .177-.073ZM23.707 1.706A1 1 0 0 0 22.293.292l-22 22a1 1 0 0 0 0 1.414l.009.009a1 1 0 0 0 1.405-.009l6.63-6.631A.251.251 0 0 1 8.515 17a.245.245 0 0 1 .177.075 10.081 10.081 0 0 0 6.5 2.92 1 1 0 0 0 1.061-1V9.266a.247.247 0 0 1 .073-.176Z"/></svg></button><input type="range" class="kg-video-volume-slider" max="100" value="100"></div></div></div></figure><p> In the above video, as I added "Eat Eggs"  only the "Eat Eggs" todo was rendered and not the entire list.</p><h2 id="memo-common-pitfalls"><code>memo</code> common Pitfalls</h2><p>A common pitfall to keep in mind when using React <code>memo</code> is that it does shallow prop-checking, and if your props are functions, array or object the component will re-render each time the parent component renders. </p><!--kg-card-begin: markdown--><p>To prevent this you can pass a comparison function the <code>memo</code> HOC. You can find more details about this at the official React Documentation: <a href="https://react.dev/reference/react/memo#specifying-a-custom-comparison-function" rel="nofollow">Specifying a custom comparison function</a></p>
<p><strong>Keep in mind if are passing the comparison function then you must compare every prop, including functions.</strong></p>
<!--kg-card-end: markdown--><h2 id="usememo-use-cases-beyond-expensive-calculations"><code>useMemo</code> Use cases beyond Expensive Calculations</h2><p>While <code>useMemo</code> is often used with caching the results of expensive computations, it can also server other important purposes just beyond performance optimizations.</p><h3 id="stabilizing-references-for-dependency-arrays">Stabilizing References for Dependency Arrays</h3><ul><li><strong>Problem: </strong>If you pass the Objects or Arrays to the dependency arrays in hooks, like for example <code>useEffect</code> or <code>useCallback</code>. They can cause unintented re-renders this is because their references change on every re-render<strong> </strong></li><li><strong>Solution: </strong>We can use the <code>useMemo</code> to memorize these Objects, so that the Object references remain the same unless the content of the Object changes</li></ul><pre><code class="language-jsx">const options = useMemo(() => ({ sortBy, filter }), [sortBy, filter]);

useEffect(() => {
  // This effect only runs when 'sortBy' or 'filter' change
}, [options]);
</code></pre><h3 id="preventing-unnecessary-re-renders-in-child-components">Preventing Unnecessary Re-renders in Child Components</h3><ul><li><strong>Problem: </strong>Passing an Array or Object as props can cause child components to re-render unnecessarily</li><li><strong>Solution: </strong>Memorizing the props with <code>useMemo</code> solves this problem and the components only re render when the props change</li></ul><pre><code class="language-jsx">const memoizedProps = useMemo(() => ({ data, onClick }), [data, onClick]);

return <MemoizedChildComponent {...memoizedProps} />;</code></pre><h3 id="memorizing-the-initial-state">Memorizing the Initial state</h3><ul><li><strong>Problem: </strong>Initializing a state with a function that is computationally intensive</li><li><strong>Solution: </strong>You can use the <code>useMemo</code> to make sure that the initialization function runs only once</li></ul><pre><code class="language-jsx">const initialState = useMemo(() => computeInitialState(params), [params]);

const [state, setState] = useState(initialState);
</code></pre><p>You might be interested in some of our other articles </p><ul><li><a href="https://deadsimplechat.com/blog/react-usememo-vs-usecallback/">React useMemo Vs useCallback</a></li><li><a href="https://deadsimplechat.com/blog/pure-component-in-react/">Pure Component in React</a></li><li><a href="https://deadsimplechat.com/blog/react-usereducer/">React useReducer and Reducer: Guide with Examples</a></li><li><a href="https://deadsimplechat.com/blog/react-usestate-the-complete-guide/">React useState: The Complete guide</a></li></ul><p></p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><figcaption>Use Memo Render process</figcaption></figure><h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2><p>In this blog post, we have seen what is React <code>memo</code> and <code>useMemo</code>. What are the differences between the two, and how we can use them to make our React applications more performant.</p><p>We have seen several code examples, and scenarios where to apply <code>memo</code> and <code>useMemo</code> and also some of the common pitfalls.</p>
</article>
<article>
<h1>How to switch Node.js versions with NVM</h1>
<p>Dead Simple Chat Team — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 17:06:00 GMT</p>
<p><em>This article was updated on 18 september 2024 to include new diagrams and section on automatic switching with bash scripts</em></p><p>In this article we are going to learn about how to switch between various nvm versions</p><ul><li>What is NVM?</li><li>How to install NVM the step by step Guide</li><li>Verifying NVM is properly installed</li><li>Installing Specific versions of Node JS</li><li>Setting a default version of node Js with NVM</li><li>How to check for Node versions available to install</li><li>Switching between Node versions</li><li>Automatic version switching with .nvmrc</li><li>Strategies for ensuring consistency across development environments</li><li>conclusion</li></ul><h2 id="what-is-nvm">What is NVM?</h2><p>Node version manager also called as NVM is a software utility that allows developers to switch between different versions of node</p><p>Some of the important features of NVM</p><ol><li>Multiple version management</li><li>Easy switching</li><li>Version specific global packages</li><li>No need for sudo</li><li>compatibility testing</li><li>Legacy support</li></ol><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><figcaption>How to install the NVM</figcaption></figure><h2 id="how-to-install-nvm-step-by-step-guide-mac-linux-and-windows">How to install NVM? Step by Step guide (Mac, Linux and Windows)</h2><p>In this section we are going to learn how to install nvm in a step by step manner. We are also going to cover different operating systems such as Mac, linux and windows</p><p>So, no matter what operating system you are using, we have got you covered</p><h3 id="installing-nvm-on-macos-and-linux">Installing NVM on macOS and Linux</h3><p>The most common method of install nvm on mac or linux is using the curl script or wget. As both mac as well as linux use the similar terminal program bash or similar, method of install is also the same </p><p>If you are looking for a <a href="https://deadsimplechat.com/javascript-chat-api-sdk">JavaScript Chat SDK and API</a>, you can consider <a href="https://deadsimplechat.com/developer/sdk/quick-start">DeadSimpleChat SDK</a> </p><p>On linux if you do not have the curl installed, first install the curl software like</p><p>install <code>curl</code></p><pre><code class="language-bash">sudo apt install curl</code></pre><p>using <code>curl</code></p><pre><code class="language-curl">curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.1/install.sh | bash
</code></pre><p>using <code>wget</code></p><pre><code class="language-bash">wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.1/install.sh | bash
</code></pre><h4 id="updating-the-profile">updating the profile</h4><p>you need to add the nvm script to your shell profile for it to work. The installation script usually automatically adds the nvm to your shell profile, if for some reason it doesn't then</p><p>Use the below script to add it to your <code>.bashrc</code> , <code>.profile</code> or <code>.zshrc</code> </p><pre><code class="language-bash">export NVM_DIR="$([ -z "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME-}" ] && printf %s "${HOME}/.nvm" || printf %s "${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/nvm")"
[ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" # This loads nvm</code></pre><h4 id="verifying-installation">Verifying installation</h4><pre><code class="language-bash">nvm --version</code></pre><h3 id="installing-nvm-on-windows">Installing nvm on windows</h3><p>generally windows users use WSL for development and windows is also encouraging this. But if for any reason you need to install nvm on your windows machine </p><p>You can install the <code>nvm-windows</code> library</p><h2 id="installing-specific-versions-nodejs">Installing specific versions NodeJs</h2><p>You can install latest version of node js or any specific version of node using nvm</p><p>to install a specific version of node use</p><pre><code class="language-bash">nvm install 14.16.0 # write the specific version that you want to install</code></pre><p>installing the latest version using nvm</p><pre><code class="language-bash">nvm install node</code></pre><p>You can check whether the node version has changed properly you can type the below command</p><pre><code class="language-bash">node --version # outputs the desired node js version</code></pre><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><figcaption>Setting the default node js version with nvm</figcaption></figure><h3 id="setting-the-default-node-js-version-with-nvm">Setting the default node js version with nvm</h3><p>you can also set a node js version as default on your machine. It can be the latest version or it can be any version that you desire</p><p>you can do this by</p><pre><code class="language-bash">nvm alias default 18.4.0</code></pre><p>then you can verify that the default node version is set by</p><pre><code class="language-bash">node --version</code></pre><h2 id="how-to-check-for-node-versions-available-to-install">How to check for Node versions available to install</h2><p>It is quite easy to check for nodejs versions that are available to install. Simply, open your terminal and type the following command</p><pre><code class="language-bash">nvm ls-remote</code></pre><p>It gives you a whole list of nodejs to choose from like this</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><figcaption>Node js versions you can install with nvm</figcaption></figure><ul><li>the list is ordered from oldest to newest versions</li><li>each line is a different version of node</li><li>LTS versions are highlighted with the word LTS written besides them</li><li>If you are interested in the LTS version of a specific version you can type <code>nvm ls-remote --lts</code></li></ul><p>to install a specific version just type</p><pre><code class="language-bash">npm install 20.7.0</code></pre><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><figcaption>Switching the node versions</figcaption></figure><h2 id="switching-between-different-versions-of-node">Switching between different versions of node</h2><p>It is quite easy to switch between different versions of node.</p><ol><li>List all the versions available to switch between with <code>nvm ls</code> or you can install a version from the remote repository and then switch to that version using <code>nvm ls-remote</code></li><li>Then type the below command to switch to a particular version with</li></ol><pre><code class="language-bash">nvm use 18.18.2</code></pre><p>3. You can check whether you have successfully switched to the selected version with the <code>node -v</code> command</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><figcaption>Automating Version Switching with .nvmrc:</figcaption></figure><h2 id="automating-version-switching-with-nvmrc">Automating Version Switching with .nvmrc:</h2><p>How to automate the process of switching Node.js versions in a project environment. <br></p><p>Step 1: Creating an <code>.nvmrc</code> file</p><ul><li>navigate to your projects root directory then</li></ul><pre><code class="language-bash">cd /path/root_directory</code></pre><ul><li>create the <code>.nvmrc</code> file</li></ul><p>you can create a new file like this</p><pre><code class="language-bash">touch .nvmrc</code></pre><ul><li>Specify the node js version that you want to use in that specific project</li></ul><pre><code class="language-bash">18.18.0</code></pre><p>and this tells nvm to use the specificed version of node when running your project </p><h2 id="automating-the-switching-the-process">Automating the switching the process</h2><p>Here are the steps to automate the switching process. </p><p>You want to automatically run the <code>nvm run</code> peocess whenever you navigate to the project directory</p><p>for this you need to add a script to your shells profile</p><ol><li>Edit the shell profile</li></ol><ul><li>for bash go to <code>./bashrc</code> or <code>./bash_profile</code></li><li>for zsh users edit the <code>~/.zshrc</code></li></ul><p>2. Add the following script</p><p>include the following script in your profile file</p><pre><code class="language-bash">autoload -U add-zsh-hook
load-nvmrc() {
  local node_version="$(nvm version)"
  local nvmrc_path="$(nvm_find_nvmrc)"

  if [ -n "$nvmrc_path" ]; then
    local nvmrc_node_version=$(nvm version "$(cat "${nvmrc_path}")")

    if [ "$nvmrc_node_version" = "N/A" ]; then
      nvm install
    elif [ "$nvmrc_node_version" != "$node_version" ]; then
      nvm use
    fi
  elif [ "$node_version" != "$(nvm version default)" ]; then
    echo "Reverting to nvm default version"
    nvm use default
  fi
}
add-zsh-hook chpwd load-nvmrc
load-nvmrc
</code></pre><p>then reload the profile with the following code</p><pre><code class="language-bash">source ~/.zshrc  # Or the appropriate file for your shell
</code></pre><p>and that's it now you know how to install and use different versions on Nodejs with NVM </p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><figcaption>Strategies for ensuring consistency across development environments</figcaption></figure><h2 id="adding-scripts-to-your-shell-profile-for-automatic-version-switching">Adding Scripts to your shell profile for automatic version switching</h2><p>You can also add specific scripts to your shell profile in order to ensure the correct Node.js version is automatically activated based on the presense of <code>.nvmrc</code> file</p><p>Here are the guide for both <code>Bash</code> as as well <code>zsh</code> scripts</p><h3 id="for-bash-shell">For Bash Shell</h3><p><strong>Step 1:</strong></p><p>The Bash profile file is typically located in teh <sub><code>/.bashrc</code> or </sub><code>/.bash_profile</code> open the file using your text editor or terminal like so</p><pre><code class="language-bash">nano ~/.bashrc</code></pre><p>Step 2: Adding the script</p><p>Append the below script at the end of your bashrc file</p><figure class="kg-card kg-code-card"><pre><code class="language-bash">cd() {
  builtin cd "$@"
  if [ -f .nvmrc ]; then
    nvm use
  fi
}
</code></pre><figcaption>bash script</figcaption></figure><h4 id="explanation-of-how-the-script-works">Explanation of how the script works</h4><ul><li>the <strong><code>cd() { ... }</code></strong>: This defines a function and overrides the default <code>cd</code> command in Bash</li><li><code>builtin cd "$@"</code> This calls the orignal <code>cd</code> function with all the arguments </li><li><code>if [ -f .nvmrc ]; then ... fi</code> This checks if there is an <code>.nvmrc</code> file in the project directory, that we have navigated to</li><li><code>nvm use</code> : The above code checks if there is an <code>.nvmrc</code> file in the directory and if the file exits the <code>nvm use</code> command telss the NVM to switch to the specified node js version that has been specified in that <code>.nvmrc</code> file</li></ul><h4 id="what-happens-when-you-cd-now">What happens when you  <code>cd</code> now</h4><ol><li>Changing directories: You can change directories as you always have using the <code>cd</code> command</li><li>Checking for <code>.nvmrc</code>: When you enter into a directory the script will check if there is an <code>.nvmrc</code> file there. If there is no file it does not do anything and nothing happens </li><li>Switch to a new node js version: If there is an <code>.nvmrc</code> file there the script will change the NodeJs version to whatever the node js version is specified in the <code>.nvmrc</code> file</li></ol><h3 id="for-zsh-shell">For ZSH Shell</h3><p>Step 1: Open you Zsh profile</p><p>the zsh profile is usually located in the <code>~/.zshrc</code>. you can open it in your text editor or using your terminal like so</p><pre><code class="language-zsh">nano ~/.zshrc</code></pre><p>Step 2: Add the following script at the end of your zsh profile</p><figure class="kg-card kg-code-card"><pre><code class="language-zsh">autoload -U add-zsh-hook

load-nvmrc() {
  local node_version="$(nvm version)"
  local nvmrc_path="$(nvm_find_nvmrc)"

  if [ -n "$nvmrc_path" ]; then
    local nvmrc_node_version=$(nvm version "$(cat "${nvmrc_path}")")

    if [ "$nvmrc_node_version" = "N/A" ]; then
      nvm install
    elif [ "$nvmrc_node_version" != "$node_version" ]; then
      nvm use
    fi
  elif [ "$node_version" != "$(nvm version default)" ]; then
    nvm use default
  fi
}

add-zsh-hook chpwd load-nvmrc
load-nvmrc
</code></pre><figcaption>automating scripts for zsh</figcaption></figure><h4 id="explanation-of-script">Explanation of script</h4><ul><li><code>autolaod -U add-zsh-hook</code> This makes sure that the zsh hook i savailable to load</li><li><code>load-nvmrc() { ... }</code> Defines a new function called as <code>load-nvmrc</code> that handles the automatic bersion switching logic</li></ul><h4 id="variables">Variables:</h4><ul><li><code>local node_version="$(nvm version)"</code> : This variable currently stores the active Node Js version</li><li><code>local nvmrc_path="$(nvm_find_nvmrc)"</code> : Screaches for a <code>.nvmrc</code> file in the current directory</li></ul><p><strong>Logic:</strong></p><ul><li><code>if [ -n "$nvmrc_path" ]; then ... fi</code>: Checks for a <code>./nvmrc</code> file path was found </li><li><code>local nvmrc_node_version=$(nvm version "$(cat "${nvmrc_path}")")</code>: This reads the Node Js  version specified in the <code>.nvmrc</code> file</li><li><code>if [ "$nvmrc_node_version" = "N/A" ]</code>: If the spcified version of node is not install this code checks for it</li><li><code>elif [ "$nvmrc_node_version" != "$node_version" ]; then nvm use</code> If the node version is not installed this installs it</li><li><code>elif [ "$node_version" != "$(nvm version default)" ]; then nvm use default</code> If the <code>./nvmrc</code> file is not found and the current version is not default this code switches to the default version</li></ul><p><strong>Hooks:</strong></p><ul><li><code>add-zsh-hook chpwd load-nvmrc</code> This adds a hook so that <code>load-nvmrc</code> is called everytime you change a directory</li><li><code>load-nvmrc</code>: The <code>load-nvmrc</code> calls a function everytime the shell starts</li></ul><h3 id="reloading-your-shell-profile">Reloading your Shell Profile</h3><p>After adding the script you need to re load your shell profiles in order to apply the changes</p><p>For Bash </p><pre><code class="language-bash">source ~./bashrc</code></pre><p>or</p><pre><code class="language-bash">source ~/.bash_profile</code></pre><p>For zsh</p><pre><code class="language-zsh">source ~/.zshrc</code></pre><p>or just close and reopen your terminal window</p><h3 id="testing-the-automatic-version-switching">Testing the Automatic version switching</h3><p><strong>step 1:</strong> Create a <code>.nvmrc</code> file in your project root folder</p><p>go to your project root directory and create a <code>.nvmrc</code>  file and specify and Node.js version there</p><pre><code class="language-bash">cd /path/to/your/root_project
echo "22.0.0" > .nvmrc</code></pre><p><strong>step 2:</strong> Navigate back and again to your project directory</p><pre><code class="language-bash">cd ~
cd -</code></pre><p><strong>Step 3:</strong> Check the node js version</p><p>check the if the node version changes with node -v</p><pre><code class="language-bash">node -v
# it should output v22.0.0</code></pre><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><figcaption>DeadSimpleChat</figcaption></figure><p></p><p></p><h2 id="need-chat-api-for-your-website-or-app">Need  <a href="https://deadsimplechat.com/">Chat API</a> for your website or app</h2><p><a href="https://deadsimplechat.com/">DeadSimpleChat</a> is an Chat API provider</p><ul><li>Add Scalable Chat to your app in minutes</li><li>10 Million Online Concurrent users</li><li>99.999% Uptime</li><li>Moderation features</li><li>1-1 Chat</li><li>Group Chat</li><li>Fully Customizable</li><li>Chat API and SDK</li><li>Pre-Built Chat</li></ul><p><strong>Need <a href="https://metered.ca/stun-turn">TURN server</a>, we recommend going with <a href="https://metered.ca/stun-turn">Metered TURN servers</a> starting at 0.04 USD / GB</strong></p><p>If you need a free version of the turn server we also have the <a href="https://www.metered.ca/tools/openrelay/">OpenRelayProject.org </a>a free TURN server.</p><p><br></p>
</article>
<article>
<h1>React ForwardRef</h1>
<p>Dead Simple Chat Team — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 14:00:00 GMT</p>
<p><em>This article was updated on 17 September 2024 t0 include updated diagrams and a segment on practical use cases of forward refs.</em></p><h2 id="what-is-forward-ref">What is Forward Ref</h2><p><code>ForwardRef()</code> is a utility function in react that let you expose a child components DOM to a parent component with a ref</p><p>Usually the parent component passes the props and data to the child component.</p><p> But in some instances like when working with input or where components need to respond with user interactions.</p><p>The parent components needs direct access to the child components DOM, to achieve this you can use forward refs</p><p>I will explain forward ref in more details along with examples below </p><pre><code class="language-javascript">const CoolComponent = forwardRef(render);</code></pre><p>Let us take an example of a form component </p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><figcaption>How does React ForwardRef work</figcaption></figure><p><strong>Dead Simple Chat allows you to add chat in your React Applications using powerful <a href="https://deadsimplechat.com/javascript-chat-api-sdk">JavaScript Chat API and SDK</a>. With Dead Simple Chat you can add chat to your application in minutes.</strong></p><h2 id="create-a-new-project-and-exposing-a-dom-node-to-the-parent-component">Create a new project and Exposing a DOM node to the parent component</h2><p>create a new react js project in your computer and follow along</p><p>In your app.js file write the below code</p><figure class="kg-card kg-code-card"><pre><code class="language-javascript">import { useRef } from 'react';

export default function Form() {
  const ref = useRef(null);

  function handleClick() {
    ref.current.focus();
  }

  return (
    <form>
    </form>
  );
}</code></pre><figcaption>react</figcaption></figure><p>here we are importing <code>useRef</code> and creating a default functional component form</p><p>in the form create a const ref and initialize the <code>useref</code> with <code>null</code></p><p>Now create a new file named <code>CoolInput.js</code></p><p>In <code>CoolInput.js</code> write the below code there</p><figure class="kg-card kg-code-card"><pre><code class="language-javascript">import { forwardRef } from 'react';

const CoolInput = forwardRef(function CoolInput(props, ref) {
  const { label, ..otherProps } = props;
  return (
    <label>
      {label}
      <input {...otherProps} ref={ref} />
    </label>
  );
});

export default MyInput;
</code></pre><figcaption>CoolInput.js</figcaption></figure><p>here we are importing the <code>forwardref</code> from react then we are wrapping the <code>CoolInput</code> function in the <code>forwardref</code> the <code>ref</code> is attached to the input elements ref attribute</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><figcaption>Forwarding Refs Through Multiple Components</figcaption></figure><p>Coming back to our <code>app.js</code> file add some additional code to it and it should look like this </p><figure class="kg-card kg-code-card"><pre><code class="language-javascript">import { useRef } from 'react';
import CoolInput from './input.js';

export default function Form() {
  const ref = useRef(null);

  function handleClick() {
    ref.current.focus();
  }

  return (
    <form>
      <CoolInput label="Type some text here:" ref={ref} />
      <button type="button" onClick={handleClick}>
        Edit
      </button>
    </form>
  );
}
</code></pre><figcaption>app.js file</figcaption></figure><p>Here we are adding a form and then we are passing the ref to the input. </p><p>Additionally we have created a button and attached its <code>onClick</code> to a <code>handleClick</code> function that focuses the on the text input when it is clicked.</p><p><strong>Dead Simple Chat allows you to add chat in your React Applications using powerful <a href="https://deadsimplechat.com/javascript-chat-api-sdk">JavaScript Chat API and SDK</a>. With Dead Simple Chat you can add chat to your application in minutes.</strong></p><h2 id="testing-the-application">Testing the application</h2><p>Here is what the application looks like</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><figcaption>application looks like</figcaption></figure><p>when you click on the edit button the input area comes into focus</p><p>The form component passes a ref to the <code>CoolInput</code>. <code>CoolInput</code> component then forwards that ref to the browsers input tag</p><p>As a result the form component can now control the browsers input tag and call input functions on it like focus</p><h2 id="forwarding-refs-through-multiple-components">Forwarding refs through multiple components</h2><p>You can forward the <code>refs</code> through multiple components as well. Let us take our example from above and refactor it to pass the <code>refs</code> through multiple components</p><p>Let us create a file call <code>middle.js</code> and there create a component called middle component</p><p>In the middle component file paste the below code</p><figure class="kg-card kg-code-card"><pre><code class="language-javascript">import React from 'react';
import CoolInput from './input';

const Middle = React.forwardRef(function middle(props, ref) {
  return (
    <div>
      <h2>Middle Component</h2>
      <CoolInput ref={ref} {...props} />
    </div>
  );
});

export default Middle;

</code></pre><figcaption>Middle.js</figcaption></figure><p>Here we are importing react and importing <code>CoolInput</code> then we are wrapping our function middle inside of <code>forwardref</code></p><p>Inside of our function middle we have <code>CoolInput</code> and we are passing our ref there to the <code>CoolInput</code> Component which in turns passes it to the browsers input </p><p>Let us open our <code>App.js</code> file and edit it and write the below code there</p><figure class="kg-card kg-code-card"><pre><code class="language-javascript">import { useRef } from 'react';
import Middle from './middle';

export default function Form() {
  const ref = useRef(null);

  function handleClick() {
    ref.current.focus();
  }

  return (
    <form>
      <Middle ref={ref} />
      <button type="button" onClick={handleClick}>
        Edit
      </button>
    </form>
  );
}
</code></pre><figcaption>app.js</figcaption></figure><p>In the <code>app.js</code> we are referencing the Middle component and not the <code>CoolInput</code> component and thus we are passing the <code>ref</code> from the Form Component to the Middle component to the <code>CoolInput</code> Component and from the <code>CoolInput</code> Component to the browsers input element</p><p>this is how you can pass the <code>refs</code> through multiple components</p><figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><figcaption>using the useImperativeHandle</figcaption></figure><h2 id="exposing-an-imperative-handle-instead-of-a-dom-node">Exposing an imperative handle instead of a DOM node</h2><p>Sometimes you do not want to explore the whole DOM node / element to a component you just want to expose some function or api to the component </p><p>In our example above we just need the focus function of the browsers element in our parent component. </p><p>We do not need other functions the input element has like <code>input.text</code> etc</p><p>We can expose only the needed functions of the DOM element using an imperative handle </p><p>Let us learn more about imperative handle using an example</p><p>Let us refactor our above example to include just expose focus nad scrollInView functions of the input elements instead of the complete element</p><p>write the below code in the input.js file</p><figure class="kg-card kg-code-card"><pre><code class="language-javascript">import { React, forwardRef, useRef, useImperativeHandle } from 'react';

const CoolInput = forwardRef(function CoolInput(props, ref) {
    const inputRef = useRef(null);

    useImperativeHandle(ref, ()=> {
        return {
            focus(){
                inputRef.current.focus()
            },
            scrollIntoView(){
                inputRef.current.scrollIntoView();
            }
        }
    }, []);

    return <input {...props} ref={inputRef} />;

});

export default CoolInput;</code></pre><figcaption>input.js</figcaption></figure><p>We are importing <code>forwardRef</code>, useRef and <code>useImperitiveHandle</code> from react</p><p>we are initializing the <code>useRef</code> with null and assigning it to a <code>inputRef</code> <code>const</code></p><p>then we are wrapping the <code>CoolInput</code> in the <code>forwardRef</code> function then we are calling the <code>useImperitiveHandle</code> function with ref as the prop and returning the <code>focus</code> and <code>scrollIntoView</code> functions </p><p>we also return the input ref with the input element</p><p><code>useImperitiveHandle</code> is used to customize what value is passed using the ref to the parent component </p><p>The empty array is also passed as the third argument so that the custom api is only created once in a components lifecycle</p><p><strong>Dead Simple Chat allows you to add chat in your React Applications using powerful <a href="https://deadsimplechat.com/javascript-chat-api-sdk">JavaScript Chat API and SDK</a>. With Dead Simple Chat you can add chat to your application in minutes.</strong></p><h2 id="common-pitfalls">Common Pitfalls</h2><p><strong>a. Over-using refs</strong></p><p>You should only use refs for situations where you cannot achieve the desired results using props </p><p>If you can use props instead of a ref, you should use the props</p><p>using refs increases app complexities</p><p><strong>b. slowdown in performance</strong></p><p>using refs causes increased re rendering of the components and slows down the application and hence they should only be used when necessary</p><p><strong>c. Incompatibility with older versions of react</strong></p><p>the refs are incompatible with older versions of react and hence cannot be used in older applications</p><p><strong>d. maintenance of code and readability of code</strong></p><p>refs cause readability and maintenance problems because they strech to multple files and you need to follow the tread and trace where this is leading </p><p><strong>e.  Should not be used in higher order components</strong></p><p>Higher order components should not use refs because it increase complexity and may cause hard to debug errors</p><p>refs should only be used in lower order components such as an input tag or an scroll view and should be designed to achieve a specific objective</p><p><strong>Dead Simple Chat allows you to add chat in your React Applications using powerful <a href="https://deadsimplechat.com/javascript-chat-api-sdk">JavaScript Chat API and SDK</a>. With Dead Simple Chat you can add chat to your application in minutes.</strong></p><h2 id="forward-refs-using-examples">Forward Refs using Examples</h2><p>Here are a few more examples of uising refs </p><p><code>WriteText.js</code> file</p><pre><code class="language-javascript">import React from 'react';

const WriteText = React.forwardRef((props, ref) => {
  return <input ref={ref} type="text" {...props} />;
});

export default WriteText;

</code></pre><p><code>App.js</code></p><figure class="kg-card kg-code-card"><pre><code class="language-javascript">import React, { useRef } from 'react';
import WriteText from './WriteText';

function App() {
  const inputRef = useRef();

  const handleButtonClick = () => {
    inputRef.current.focus();
  };

  return (
    <div>
      <WriteText ref={inputRef} />
      <button onClick={handleButtonClick}>Elements in focus is Input</button>
    </div>
  );
}

export default App;</code></pre><figcaption>App.js</figcaption></figure><p>Here the <code>WriteText</code> components forwards the input element directly to the parent </p><p><strong>Dead Simple Chat allows you to add chat in your React Applications using powerful <a href="https://deadsimplechat.com/javascript-chat-api-sdk">JavaScript Chat API and SDK</a>. With Dead Simple Chat you can add chat to your application in minutes.</strong></p><h2 id="example-2-forwarding-refs-to-an-instance-of-a-child-component">Example 2 : forwarding refs to an instance of a child component</h2><p>Here we are going to expose a method of the child component to the parent component </p><p>The parent component can then call the function inside of the child component</p><figure class="kg-card kg-code-card"><pre><code class="language-javascript">
import React, { useState, useImperativeHandle } from 'react';

const Calculator = React.forwardRef((props, ref) => {
  const [count, setCount] = useState(0);

  useImperativeHandle(ref, () => ({
    add: () => {
      setCount(count => count + 1);
    }
  }));

  return <div>Number: {count}</div>;
});

export default Calculator;
</code></pre><figcaption>Calculator.js</figcaption></figure><p>This is the <code>calculator.js</code> the child component file. </p><p>next we look at the <code>App.js</code> file</p><figure class="kg-card kg-code-card"><pre><code class="language-javascript">import React, { useRef } from 'react';
import Calculator from './Calculator';

function App() {
  const CalculatorRef = useRef();

  const handleButtonClick = () => {
    CalculatorRef.current.add();
  };

  return (
    <div>
      <Calculator ref={CalculatorRef} />
      <button onClick={handleButtonClick}>Add number</button>
    </div>
  );
}

export default App;</code></pre><figcaption>app.js</figcaption></figure><p>In the <code>app.js</code> we can cal the Calculator ref function <code>Add()</code> to add number to the count.</p><p>Thus in this way we can access the child components method from the parent component</p><h2 id="forwardref-reference">ForwardRef Reference</h2><p><strong>forwardRef(render)</strong>: You can call <code>forwardRef(render)</code> to let your component receive a ref and forward it to a child component</p><p><strong>Parameters</strong> </p><p><code>render</code>  the render funtion for your component. The react calls this render function with props and refs that the component received from its parent </p><p>The JSX will be return from your component. A component recieved from <code>forwardRef</code> can also recieve a ref prop</p><p><strong>Return</strong> </p><p><code>forwardRef</code> Returns a component that you can render in JSX </p><p><strong>Caveats</strong></p><p>In strict mode the react will call the render function twice. But if your render function is pure as it should be this should not affect the output of your component.</p><h2 id="practical-use-cases">Practical Use-Cases</h2><p>Accessing the DOM elements within child components, is common when working with react.</p><p>Often when you need a parent component to access a child components DOM node directly like for controlling the focus or manipulating the styles. </p><p>Passing the refs to the child component can be a challenge, this is due to the react's architecture of unidirectional data flow and encapsulation of component logic.</p><p>To help with this, react has provided us with the forwardRef API. Using this api the child components can expose their internal DOM node directly to the parent component</p><p>This mechanism is important for building reusable components that are flexible and maintainable in nature</p><p>Let us consider some real world example to better understand this </p><p><strong>Scenario:</strong></p><p>Let us consider a custom <code>TextInput</code> component, we want the parent component to control the text input field when it comes into focus, this could be in response to a user clicking it</p><p><strong>Challenges:</strong></p><ul><li><strong>Accessing the DOM directly:</strong> The parent component cannot directly access the DOM node of <code>TextInput</code> component because it is encapsulated</li><li><strong>Ref forwarding: </strong>When you are passing a ref from the parent component to a child component the child component has to handle it appropriately</li></ul><p><strong>Solution:</strong></p><p>We can use the React.forwardRef  the <code>TextInput</code> component can then forward the ref to the underlying DOM element and the parent component can then directly interact with it</p><h3 id="integrating-with-third-party-libraries">Integrating with third party libraries</h3><p>When you are working with react applicaitons sometimes you need to use the third party libraries for things like pre-built components and functionalities</p><p>However, you might need to wrap these components in orderto </p><ul><li>Add custom styling or behaviour</li><li>Standardized APIs across your application</li><li>Or if you want ot extend the functionality of your app without changing the orignal library code</li></ul><p>One challange arises is that how can you manage refs when wrapping the components</p><p>Refs are important for accessing child DOM elements or component instances especially when you need do things like</p><ul><li>Focus on an input field</li><li>Trigger animations</li><li>Integrate with non-react libraries</li></ul><p>By default React does not pass the refs through components unless expicitly handled </p><p>These times you can use the react.forwardRef can be useful.</p><h3 id="higher-order-components-and-refs">Higher order components and Refs</h3><p>Using the <code>forwardRefs</code> with HOC</p><p>Higher Order Components are functions that take a component and return a new component,</p><p>They enhance it with additional functionalities, some of the common use cases are</p><ul><li>State management</li><li>Logging and </li><li>Authorization checks</li></ul><p>However, the HOCs can interfere with the refs passing, this is because the refs are not passed as props. By default refs are attached to the HOC do not react the wrapped component</p><p><strong>Problem:</strong></p><ul><li><strong>Ref Blocking: </strong>When you wrap a component with HOC the refs are that you attach to the HOC does not get passed on to the  child component</li><li><strong>Functional component and refs: </strong>Functional components cannot accept the refs unless you use the <code>forwardRefs</code></li></ul><p><strong>Solution:</strong></p><p>You can use the <code>forwardRefs</code> you pass the refs from the higher order components to the child components and also pass the refs to functional components using this</p><h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2><p>In this article we have learnt what are react refs, how to use them</p><p>I hope you liked the article</p><p>Thanks for reading</p>
</article>
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