I've always liked the irc approach myself, with a web client for those who use them. cgi::irc is my favorite web client, but can be resource intensive. No java support required, but provides a very smooth natural chatting environment (whereas the PHP one on FG looks like it reloads the page every few seconds, and of course doesn't connect to an IRC server.)
cgi::irc can be quite resource intensive, probably a big "no-no" on shared hosting.
Well, I'll do my part to "inflate the numbers" for a while anyway, I'm in the chat, whether I'm paying attention or not.