A live, casual shoutbox for your community. Real-time messages, emoji reactions, link previews, moderator tools, optional AI bot.

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LobbyChat is a lightweight live-chat shoutbox you can drop into any WordPress page or sidebar with a single shortcode. Built for communities — fan sites, forums, fandoms, classrooms, internal teams — where you want a casual, always-on group chat without bolting on Slack or Discord.
<h4>What you get</h4>
<ul>
<li>Live chat feed with auto-refresh (configurable polling interval — no WebSocket server required)</li>
<li>Guest posting — visitors can chat with just a display name, no signup wall</li>
<li>Emoji reactions on every message — 👍 ❤️ 😂 🔥 🎉</li>
<li>Link previews for YouTube and any URL with Open Graph tags</li>
<li>@mention highlighting — <code>@username</code> gets visually picked out</li>
<li>Pinned messages — moderators can pin one important message above the feed</li>
<li>Online presence — live count of members, guests, and search-engine bots in the room</li>
<li>Moderator role — add a “LobbyChat Moderator” role to any user for pin/delete powers</li>
<li>Reporting + auto-hide — 5 reports on a message and it’s hidden automatically</li>
<li>Word blocklist for basic profanity filtering</li>
<li>Rate limiting built in — separate cooldowns for guests vs members</li>
<li>Fullscreen mode + collapse toggle</li>
<li>Sound notification for new messages (toggleable per-visitor)</li>
<li>Mobile responsive</li>
</ul>
<h4>Optional: AI Chat Companion</h4>
LobbyChat ships with an optional AI bot you can drop into your chat. The bot uses your own API keys — you bring your own Google Gemini key (the free tier works) or OpenAI key. The plugin does not route requests through any third-party server.
<ul>
<li>Bring-your-own-key — Gemini (free tier) or OpenAI (paid)</li>
<li>Configurable persona — name, system prompt, custom personality</li>
<li>Smart triggers — replies to @mentions always; questions usually; random messages occasionally (all configurable)</li>
<li>Hard rate limits — daily and hourly caps protect against runaway API costs</li>
<li>Active-hours window — bot only chats during the hours you specify</li>
<li>One-click test in the admin to verify the bot can post</li>
</ul>
<h4>Privacy & data</h4>
LobbyChat does not call any third-party server by default. The only network calls are:
<ul>
<li>Fetching link previews when a user shares a URL (request goes from your server to that URL)</li>
<li>Calling Google Gemini or OpenAI only if you explicitly enable the AI bot and provide an API key</li>
</ul>
No telemetry, no analytics, no “phone home.” All data lives in your own <code>wp_lobbychat*</code> tables.
<h4>Try it live</h4>
See LobbyChat running in production at <a href="https://bejaunty.com/plugins/lobbychat" rel="nofollow ugc">bejaunty.com/plugins/lobbychat</a>.
<h4>Roadmap</h4>
LobbyChat is the free, standalone version. Premium add-ons with gaming-community features — looking-for-group buttons, platform tags, profile-card integration, and richer moderation tools — are in development. Updates and announcements at <a href="https://bejaunty.com" rel="nofollow ugc">bejaunty.com</a>.
<h4>Support development</h4>
LobbyChat is free and developed in spare time. If it helps your community, you can support development at <a href="https://wise.com/pay/me/asadk372" rel="nofollow ugc">wise.com/pay/me/asadk372</a>. Every bit is appreciated. ♥
<h4>Usage</h4>
After activating, drop this shortcode into any page, post, or text widget:
<pre><code>[lobbychat]
</code></pre>
Then visit Settings → LobbyChat to configure rate limits, blocklist, and other options. For the AI bot, see Settings → LobbyChat AI Bot.
<h4>Developer hooks</h4>
LobbyChat exposes several filters and actions for theme/plugin developers:
<ul>
<li><code>lobbychat_after_send</code> — action, fires after a message is saved. <code>do_action('lobbychat_after_send', $user_id, $message_id, $row)</code> — the third arg is the database row object.</li>
<li><code>lobbychat_profile_url</code> — filter, override the URL linked from a username (default: WP author archive)</li>
<li><code>lobbychat_allowed_reactions</code> — filter, override the array of allowed reaction emoji</li>
<li><code>lobbychat_report_threshold</code> — filter, change the auto-hide report threshold (default: 5)</li>
</ul>
<h3>External services</h3>
This plugin does not connect to any external service by default. Two optional features may, only when explicitly enabled by the site administrator, contact third-party services:
<h4>1. Link previews</h4>
When the link-sharing feature is enabled (Settings → LobbyChat → “Allow link sharing”, which is on by default), and a logged-in user shares a URL in chat, the plugin’s server fetches that URL once to extract Open Graph / Twitter / <code><title></code> metadata for a preview card.
<ul>
<li>What is sent: The HTTP request from your server to the URL the user pasted. The request user-agent identifies as <code>LobbyChatBot/1.0</code> and includes a link back to your site.</li>
<li>When: Only at the moment a user posts a message containing a URL.</li>
<li>What is received and stored: Title, description, and image URL extracted from the page’s metadata. Stored in the chat message row in your database.</li>
<li>Special handling for YouTube URLs: YouTube URLs are first sent to YouTube’s public oEmbed endpoint (<code>https://www.youtube.com/oembed</code>) to retrieve title and author info. YouTube’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/static?template=terms" rel="nofollow ugc">Terms of Service</a> and <a href="https://policies.google.com/privacy" rel="nofollow ugc">Privacy Policy</a> apply.</li>
</ul>
This feature can be fully disabled by un-checking “Allow link sharing” in plugin settings.
<h4>2. Optional AI chat companion</h4>
When the AI bot is explicitly enabled by the administrator (Settings → LobbyChat AI Bot → “Enable bot”, which is off by default) and the administrator has provided their own API key for one or both of the providers below, chat messages are sent to that provider for the bot to generate replies.
Google Gemini API (<code>https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/</code>) 
* What it is: Google’s generative AI service, used here to produce conversational chat replies. 
* What is sent: Up to 6 most recent chat messages (sender display name + message text), the bot’s system prompt, and the administrator’s Gemini API key. 
* When: Only when the administrator has enabled the bot AND a chat message satisfies the bot’s reply-trigger rules (mention, question, or random chance — all configurable). 
* Terms and privacy: <a href="https://developers.google.com/terms" rel="nofollow ugc">Google APIs Terms of Service</a>, <a href="https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/terms" rel="nofollow ugc">Gemini API Additional Terms</a>, <a href="https://policies.google.com/privacy" rel="nofollow ugc">Google Privacy Policy</a>.
OpenAI API (<code>https://api.openai.com/</code>) 
* What it is: OpenAI’s chat completions API, used here as a fallback when Gemini fails or as the primary if only an OpenAI key is configured. 
* What is sent: Same as Gemini above (recent messages + system prompt + administrator’s OpenAI API key). 
* When: Same conditions as Gemini above. 
* Terms and privacy: <a href="https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use" rel="nofollow ugc">OpenAI Terms of Use</a>, <a href="https://openai.com/policies/api-data-usage-policies" rel="nofollow ugc">OpenAI API Data Usage Policies</a>, <a href="https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy" rel="nofollow ugc">OpenAI Privacy Policy</a>.
The AI bot is disabled by default and will not contact any external service unless the administrator explicitly enables it and provides an API key.

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