Mac OS X Server

Mac OS X Server 10.5: Customizing the iChat Server Welcome Message

I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal

Customizing the welcome message to new users of your iChat server is a fairly simple task. For this, we’ll look into the jabber configuration because jabber is the Open Source package that iChat Server is built on.

When you first setup jabber the /etc/jabber directory will be created. Inside this folder will be a file called jabber.xml. If you open the jabber xml file and look for the “welcome” tag then anything between the "welcome" and"/welcome" will be the information that is shown in a welcome screen when a new user signs onto the iChat server. Before you edit the /etc/jaber/jabber.xml file make sure to back it up.

For this example we will have all new users receive a message that says Welcome to the 318 iChat Server. To do this, delete or comment out the information between the existing welcome tags and add the following information:

"welcome"
"subject"318 iChat Server"/subject"
"body"Welcome to the 318 iChat Server"/body"
"/welcome"

Save the jabber.xml file and you’ve now customized the welcome message for your iChat server.

Note, for the purpose of this article the < and > have been replaced with quotes (”). However, you will need to use the < and > in your environment while using the Jabber.xml file.