LobbyChat

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)

1.0.7

• Updated: "Tested up to" bumped to WordPress 7.0.

1.0.6

• Updated: Plugin URI now points to the GitHub source repository (github.com/JauntyMYT/lobbychat) for a more stable canonical URL.

1.0.5

• Compliance: Moved inline admin JavaScript to a properly enqueued file (assets/js/admin.js) loaded only on the bot settings page via admin_enqueue_scripts, per WordPress.org coding standards.
• Compliance: Renamed all plugin-defined constants from the 3-character LBC_* prefix to LOBBYCHAT_* to meet the 4+ character prefix requirement.

1.0.4

• Compliance: "Powered by LobbyChat" frontend attribution is now opt-in (off by default) per WordPress.org guidelines on plugin attribution.
• Compliance: Added detailed "External services" section to readme documenting all third-party API calls (Gemini, OpenAI, YouTube oEmbed, link preview fetches) with terms-of-service and privacy-policy links.

1.0.3

• Fixed: Link sharing now works for any URL — previously only worked when the linked page had perfectly-formatted Open Graph tags. Now handles Twitter cards, plain <title> tags, and falls back to a bare link card if no metadata is available.
• Improved: Open Graph parser now handles meta tags with content before property, mixed quote styles, and follows redirects.
• Improved: Bumped link-fetch timeout from 5s to 8s for slower-responding sites.
• Updated: Plugin URI and demo link now point to bejaunty.com.

1.0.2

• Plugin Check compliance: addressed all errors and warnings from the official WordPress Plugin Check tool.
• Replaced parse_url() with wp_parse_url(), mt_rand() with wp_rand(), date() with gmdate().
• Added wp_unslash() to all $_POST and $_SERVER reads before sanitization.
• Refactored get_messages() to avoid dynamic SQL fragments — now uses two clean prepared queries.
• Added documented phpcs suppressions for legitimate direct-DB access (custom plugin tables) and bot logging.
• Removed redundant load_plugin_textdomain() (WP.org auto-loads translations since WP 4.6).
• Removed Domain Path header (no /languages/ folder needed for WP.org-hosted plugins).
• Bumped Tested up to: 6.9 to match current WordPress release.
• Renamed template-scope variables to use full lobbychat_ prefix.

1.0.1

• Fixed: Send button not working in some themes — moved script localization earlier so the LobbyChat global is always defined when the JS loads.
• Fixed: Click handler now uses event delegation, so it survives DOM changes from page builders and caching plugins.
• Fixed: Uninstall now correctly drops the messages table (was using the wrong table name).
• Fixed: Removed unused tag column from the messages table schema (auto-migrates from 1.0.0).
• Added: "Show 'Powered by' link" toggle in Settings (on by default — admins can turn it off).
• Added: Donate link on the Plugins page, in plugin header, and on the settings page footer.
• Added: Console diagnostic when the LobbyChat global is missing (helps debug script-loading conflicts).

1.0.0

• Initial release.
• Live chat feed with HTTP polling.
• Guest and member posting with separate rate limits.
• Emoji reactions, link previews (YouTube + Open Graph), pinned messages.
• Reporting with auto-hide threshold.
• Word blocklist + 60-second self-delete window.
• Custom LobbyChat Moderator role.
• Online presence with bot detection.
• Optional AI chat companion (Gemini + OpenAI fallback).
• Fullscreen mode, collapse toggle, sound notifications.