All the public and private rooms are managed from the "My Rooms" screen.




Public rooms


The public rooms are those available to everyone in the room browser. If you are a room owner,  they will be displayed first in alphabetical order with a universe symbol next to them.  If you are a room moderator, those rooms will be shown with alphabetical order with yin-yang symbol next to them.


On the My Rooms page, you will see everything you need to manage your rooms.

On the right side, you can see the Basic room properties tab, with the following options:

  • Topic:   You can set and change the topic of your room here.  If you prefer, you can also change the topic within the room by typing /topic <topic text>
  • Password:  This is where you set the password for the room of your choice.  To do so, simply tick the password protect box, then fill in the password dialog box 
  • Allow invites or links to other rooms:  If this option is not selected all outvites (invites to other rooms) or links to other rooms will be disabled.
  • Allow log or copy room contents:  If this option is not selected, users will not be able to log your room or copy contents from your room to the clipboard.
  • Graphic theme:  Please note that when you set a graphic theme for your room, the room and the associated wall will have a style, graphics and colors that are different from the default theme or the theme for your client.
  • Backup and Restore:  The "backup rooms" button will save the properties of all the rooms you manage to an pre-defined location in case your settings are lost or changed by other user accidentally.  To restore your rooms, simply highlight the room to be restored and then click  "Restore Room" button to restore the selected room from the backup file.  


The Users tab



You can see the room owner from here and control all the room admins, helpers and banned users.

Although you can ban users from here, it is highly advisable to ban the user while still in the room, so the program will gather more data to make it more difficult for the user to return, even with a different user name.

If you are the room owner, you will be able to click the "Transfer ownership" room to any of the existing room operators and hand over ownership to them.


The Messages tab


The message wall associated to the room has a few settings that can be selected here,  they seem already self-explanatory.

The Welcome Message tab



This dialog box allows you to edit the welcome message to your room.  It is very similar to the editor found in chats, private messages or walls and enables you to easily make welcome messages for your rooms. If you know HTML, simply click on the <> button and you can enter whatever HTML you like for a highly customized welcome message. To personalize your welcome message for each user that enters your room, simply put $Nick in your welcome message. When a user enters, it will be replaced with the user's name.

Private rooms

These rooms do not show in the room browser and can only be reached by invitation, links or saving them in favorites.  

These are all rooms owned by you. You cannot manage other people's private rooms.  Operator status in a private room can be used to moderate the room once inside, not to manage it.


There are 2 types of private rooms:

Network-hosted private rooms:  These rooms are hosted on the Filetopia network and are easiest to manage.

User-hosted private rooms:  These rooms are hosted on the owner's computer.


To turn a network-hosted room into self-hosted, you must select  "Secure Direct Chat" in the basic tab.

Apart from this, all other room settings in private rooms are the same as in public rooms, with 2 important differences:

  • Private rooms DO NOT have an associated message wall.
  • User-hosted private rooms have an additional room management tab:  Room Key.  The Room Key contains the key users need to enter your self-hosted private room.   


In this tab you can manage your room's chat key.  The encrypted chat key contains information pertaining to the hosting of your private room, including your IP and port.  This information enables invited users to access your user-hosted private room. 

If you have a dynamic IP address or if the port changes, the existing key becomes invalid and will be highlighted in red.  You will then need to generate a new room key and distribute it to your users so they can access your room. 


In case you select the option "Only allow admins/helpers in the key"  the complete list of admins/helpers at the time will be included in the chat key, rendering it useless for the rest of the users.

You can also allow Invites to bypass the key,  allowing anyone inside your room to invite other people without using the key.  This might be useful to allow temporal guests into your room that will not be able to enter again without an invitation as they do not have the key.


If  there is an existing valid key, but you need to include more people in the room key you can click on update key to add new users to the key, but leave other room data intact.  If you use this function, the existing key still works, but the new key (with the additional users now added) works as well.

To enter a chat key

If you are given a key by a room user and need to input it into Filetopia, go to the Main menu, then Rooms->Enter Room Key.  Your computer will now store this key until another one is entered for the same room.  In addition, once you enter a chat key,  that room will automatically be added to your Favorites list.

To enter a private room, simply click on your favorites list.