ahh ok... both of those last options worked quite nicely. I opted to go with the "&RequireUserLogin();" - I didn't realize it could be so simple. That works beautifully since it gives them the same thing they'd get otherwise if they tried to access any other resource that's restricted. Thanks LK.
You know, I'll be some people would love to have that in the control panel. Maybe as a general option for the chat, you could have "require users to log in to utilize chat" or something. It could even go on the first page.
