As Habari moves towards its first non-alpha release—the 0.5 beta is due out on 15 May—we can expect more users that aren't developers to try out the software. We need to make sure that the early experiences these users have is as positive as possible. Of course, being beta, there are still going to be issues, as well as the learning curve of using a new piece of software. As the community is pretty developer heavy at the moment, new folks are usually developers too, and if they are having issues they simply jump onto #habari and talk to other developers live. It's a great way to make people feel part of the community.

However, IRC isn't ubiquitous. A lot of new users won't have even heard of it. But we want them to be able to have this positive introduction to the Habari community too. To this end, and thanks to the good folk from Mibbit, I've written a plugin that embeds the Habari channel in the admin. Activate the Live Help plugin (available from the extras repository), go up to the Admin menu and select Live Help. And here's a screenshot, #habari in Habari.