Hello, all,
As I understand it, the local IM client sends a presence update to the Openfire server on a regular basis, starting with the system default of “Online” when logging in.
Is there any way to locate and change that first message, and edit the text or presence option? The idea being to edit the local client so that it’s “Online” option sends something else to the Openfire server when users log in. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated. Thank you!
That’s the closest to your request, that i have filed maaany years ago https://issues.igniterealtime.org/browse/SPARK-981
Anyway, this is not available in Spark. It always starts Online (well, unless you select invisible on login screen).
Thanks for the quick reply. I can’t help but think there’s something I can modify… I mean, the actual word “Online” has to be stored somewhere, either on the server or the client. And this is all open source… Is it just that it’s too hard to reconfigure on my own?
Open source usually means that the source is freely available, you can modify it and build your own version, not that it is easy to modify something in an already built app 
You can change it, it is a simple translation string and it is translated differently in other languages. This one is for English. https://github.com/igniterealtime/Spark/blob/master/core/src/main/resources/i18n/spark_i18n.properties#L258
But again, you would have to build Spark, create and installer, distribute it to your clients (PCs). This is not trivial unfortunately.
I meant that if you are a user. If you are a developer, then this should be easier.
This is a great start, thanks! I have a lot of learning to do to get from here to there, but you gave me enough I think to get it done. Thanks again!