All members have been upgraded to a new chat system, where you can see who's online in the chat right now (i.e. very recently opened it) and where you can access the chat with a little popup in the corner of your screen on every page. Hopefully this makes it more accessible. The navigation also now has a little red bubble with the number of people recently active in the chat.
Gold members have been upgraded to live messenger as well. This is private Facebook-style real-time chats, and often much more convenient than private messages back and forth. Gold members can currently only message other gold members and staff, but this will soon be expanded if the trial is popular.
Please bear with me as there may be some small bugs initially, but overall the chatting process should be improved. Sound can be disabled if you have no interest in chat. 🙂 Enjoy.