I must be so old.<p>I spend all day sitting on an IRC style 'chatroom' with a bunch of friends, that was written about decade ago.<p>It uses a combination of javascript ('ajax') on the client side, and crappy ASP on the backend (because the only server at the time that was available was a Windows server).<p>The comms is very simple asynchronous polling and formatting/parsing javascript. In fact the only updates over time have really been all client side to take advantage of new browser features. It works through firewalls and proxies (which websockets <i>still</i> do not) - basically anywhere you can see a modern webpage.<p>My rambling point is... you don't need all these frameworks to push a message to a server, and fetch back a list of new ones. In fact for low volume handful-of-users chat traffic <i>you don't even need a database</i> (gasp!).<p>I know we should all avoid re-inventing the wheel where possible, but are you (not 'you' the OP, but 'you' the fictional reader) really a web developer, if all you are doing is gluing ever changing frameworks together ??