Comm Panels: What are they, and how do I make one?

In the exodus from WBS.net, room owners found themselves with more options, and more responsibilities. While the responsibilities are well out of the relm of this text, the options are the very core of the issue that I'm going to deal with.

While it's only been a recent innovation, custom comm panels have taken off, due to the fact that they add a unique feel to the room. And yet, for all their popularity, it seems there's few explnations of just how to create them, which is something I'm hopefully going to take on today.

Please note, knowing the basics of HTML (links, changeing font colours/styles and tables) should be learned before attempting to create a comm panel. It will save you a lot of time and agrivation. This tutorial simply covers the details of what's what in terms of comm panels.

Part I: The basics.

Look at the picture below. It's the basic SilverCrossings comm panel. No frill, and easy to use.

It looks simple enough.A table, 4 drop boxes, a text area, a post button, a location box, and some text links. In fact, knowing a bit of HTML, will make something like this trivial. Let's do a bit of disecting...

Now, I'm sure some of you are thinking "What the hell is with those Wblahblahblah things!?" Well, those are what the chat picks out of the comm panel code, and replaces it with the proper item. If you compair the image to the disected image, you can see what does what, but here's a list:

WCHARSLCT : Inserts your handle list
WFONTFACE : The list of fonts to choose from
WFONTCOLR : The list of font colours to choose from for your post
WFONTSIZE : The list of font sizes for your posts
WPOSTSEND : Create a post button
WSCRLBACK : Unseen in this view, creates a scroll back box for Non Streaming/Non Frames users
WLOCATION : Creates the location box

Ok, that's all and well you're thinking, but what about the other things, like the Text box, and the links?

Well, here's the thing, the rest is (almost) all proper HTML. So it's simple to do.

Post box is created by useing the <TextArea> tag.
<TEXTAREA name="POST" rows="3" cols="50"></TEXTAREA>
ATTENTION! The name="POST" part MUST remain that way. It's required for the chat to be able to process the information. The rows and cols can be freely changed, to alter the size of the text area to fit your design.

Configuration: This is the link to where one can change the details associated with their handle. Not much in the way of changes avaliable here. 
<A LCONFIG>Configuration</a>

Private Message: Once again, not much in the way of things to be altered here
<A LPRIVTE>Private Message</a>

Ignore: This is the link to where one can place people in ignore, so they don't view the person's posts Not much in the way of changes avaliable here. 
<A LIGNORE>Ignore</a>

Who's On: This is the link to the list of the people who are currently online. Not much in the way of changes avaliable here. 
<A LWHOSON>Who'sOn</a>