How difficult would it be to place a private messaging script into a business directory? Where if people looking for services wanted to contact businesses, they could do so in the site? The Script Im using is a simple open source business directory script. Not PHP FOX, Link Directory, etc... It is PHP though. Please PM me if you can help - Or just leave some suggestions in the thread.
Very easy to make with some php experience. You need to make a messages table with to, from, date, subj, and body columns. In your sql query, only select messages where the current user is in the to or from column. Will only take an hour or so of programming to implement.
Or you can use Livezilla for free.... http://www.livezilla.net/ I'll charge 25$ to get it installed for you (but it seems somewhat decent for most people to install, so try it first and see if you can get it installed yourself, thus making it completely free ) But basically the businesses would need the client installed on their end of the site, and user accounts created for them. On the client side of the site anyone could hop on since its the same as those "live chat" modules you see on a lot of sales sites.