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.

What you get

Live chat feed with auto-refresh (configurable polling interval — no WebSocket server required)
Guest posting — visitors can chat with just a display name, no signup wall
Emoji reactions on every message — 👍 ❤️ 😂 🔥 🎉
Link previews for YouTube and any URL with Open Graph tags
@mention highlighting — @username gets visually picked out
Pinned messages — moderators can pin one important message above the feed
Online presence — live count of members, guests, and search-engine bots in the room
Moderator role — add a “LobbyChat Moderator” role to any user for pin/delete powers
Reporting + auto-hide — 5 reports on a message and it’s hidden automatically
Word blocklist for basic profanity filtering
Rate limiting built in — separate cooldowns for guests vs members
Fullscreen mode + collapse toggle
Sound notification for new messages (toggleable per-visitor)
Mobile responsive

Optional: AI Chat Companion

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.

Bring-your-own-key — Gemini (free tier) or OpenAI (paid)
Configurable persona — name, system prompt, custom personality
Smart triggers — replies to @mentions always; questions usually; random messages occasionally (all configurable)
Hard rate limits — daily and hourly caps protect against runaway API costs
Active-hours window — bot only chats during the hours you specify
One-click test in the admin to verify the bot can post

Privacy & data

LobbyChat does not call any third-party server by default. The only network calls are:

Fetching link previews when a user shares a URL (request goes from your server to that URL)
Calling Google Gemini or OpenAI only if you explicitly enable the AI bot and provide an API key

No telemetry, no analytics, no “phone home.” All data lives in your own wp_lobbychat* tables.

Try it live

See LobbyChat running in production at bejaunty.com/plugins/lobbychat.

Roadmap

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 bejaunty.com.

Support development

LobbyChat is free and developed in spare time. If it helps your community, you can support development at wise.com/pay/me/asadk372. Every bit is appreciated. ♥

Usage

After activating, drop this shortcode into any page, post, or text widget:

[lobbychat]

Then visit Settings LobbyChat to configure rate limits, blocklist, and other options. For the AI bot, see Settings LobbyChat AI Bot.

Developer hooks

LobbyChat exposes several filters and actions for theme/plugin developers:

lobbychat_after_send — action, fires after a message is saved. do_action('lobbychat_after_send', $user_id, $message_id, $row) — the third arg is the database row object.
lobbychat_profile_url — filter, override the URL linked from a username (default: WP author archive)
lobbychat_allowed_reactions — filter, override the array of allowed reaction emoji
lobbychat_report_threshold — filter, change the auto-hide report threshold (default: 5)

External services

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:

1. Link previews

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 / <title> metadata for a preview card.

What is sent: The HTTP request from your server to the URL the user pasted. The request user-agent identifies as LobbyChatBot/1.0 and includes a link back to your site.
When: Only at the moment a user posts a message containing a URL.
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.
Special handling for YouTube URLs: YouTube URLs are first sent to YouTube’s public oEmbed endpoint (https://www.youtube.com/oembed) to retrieve title and author info. YouTube’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy apply.

This feature can be fully disabled by un-checking “Allow link sharing” in plugin settings.

2. Optional AI chat companion

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 (https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/)
* 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: Google APIs Terms of Service, Gemini API Additional Terms, Google Privacy Policy.

OpenAI API (https://api.openai.com/)
* 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: OpenAI Terms of Use, OpenAI API Data Usage Policies, OpenAI Privacy Policy.

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.