I would personally prefer IP.Chat but neither of them should be on the board index to reduce spam, requests and support. We can have a banner notice which redirects to the chat. With some design and artwork it would harm the home page at all. There should be an option for moderators to moderate the IP.Chat remotely if the chat is full. BBCode is not missing I think because image links were broken anyways in the shoutbox and only a few people use spoilers for large images without a warning. Expand the IP.Chat to 100. IP.Chat greatly supports Java Script and can be tweaked pretty easy. Like we heard generally older members come to chat. Some new members may join for a day but you usually never see them again.
Staff chat is useless although they are most likely online. A whole chat for 5 people is ridiculous, discussing through threads and PMs is enough. On the other side a chat for VIP members would be better. They can chit-chat, share feedback of hacks with each other and maybe it gives them some more confidence to express their wishes and improvements towards VIP.