How to Create Chat Rooms in WordPress for Your Users

Do you dream of creating a lively website where visitors can connect and chat with each other? Maybe you run a fan community, an elearning portal, a support group, a gaming forum, or some other kind of community-focused website.

At WPBeginner, readers often ask us how they can get more engagement, and a chat room is a great option.

A chat room allows visitors to interact with each other or even speak to you directly. This can keep people on your website for longer, without forwarding them to an external chat client like Slack or Discord.

In this article, we will show you how to take your site to the next level and create an engaging, interactive community. Here’s how to create a chat room in WordPress for your users.

Why Add a Chat Room in WordPress?

If you run a membership website or an online forum, then you may want to create an instant messaging chat room for your users.

You could use a third-party service like Slack, WhatsApp, Facebook groups, or Discord. The problem with these methods is that all communication happens outside your website, so you don’t have control over the chat experience.

This approach also encourages people to leave your website, which is bad news for your pageviews and bounce rate in WordPress.

By embedding a chat room in your website, you can keep people on your site for longer and build a stronger sense of community.

Note: Chat rooms tend to work best for small communities of users. If want to offer live customer support, then check out our list of the best live chat support software.

That said, let’s take a look at how to add a chat room to your WordPress blog or website.

Adding Chat Rooms in WordPress

The easiest way to add chat rooms in WordPress is by using Simple Ajax Chat. This plugin allows you to add a simple chat room to any page, post, or widget-ready area.

It also lets you restrict access to logged-in users or even create a chat room that’s completely open to the public. For more details, see our Simple Ajax Chat review.

Note: In this guide, we are using the free Simple Ajax Chat plugin, as it has everything you need to create a single chat room. However, if you want to create multiple different chatrooms, then you’ll need to upgrade to Plugin Planet Simple Ajax Chat.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, go to Settings » Simple Ajax Chat to set up your chat room.

To start, click to expand the ‘Plugin Settings’ section and then change the ‘Default name’ to anything you want.

You can also type in a ‘Default message’, which will appear the first time someone visits your chat room.

Next, you can decide whether users need to be logged in to use the chat room. Requiring user registration can help you combat spam and trolls, but a public chat room may get more users.

To make this decision, either check or uncheck the box next to ‘Require users to be logged in to view and use the chat box.’

You may also want to check the box next to ‘Logged-in username’ so that WordPress shows the person’s username in the chat.

Another option is to allow non-registered visitors to read the chat but not interact. People who like what they see might create an account in order to join the conversation, so you may want to check the box next to ‘Display chat messages as read-only.’

With that done, you can customize the chat room. For example, you might add your own logo, custom colors, and branding.

You can do this using the settings in the’ Times and Colors’ and ‘Appearance’ boxes.

You can also replace the default notification icon with your own image. For example, you might use your logo, icon, or any other image you’ve created using web design software such as Canva.

To add your own graphic, find the ‘Default notification icon’ field and click on ‘Upload.’

You can now either choose an image from the WordPress media library or upload a file from your computer.

If you make any changes in this section, then don’t forget to click on ‘Save Settings.’

After that, you can click to expand the ‘Banned phrases’ section and then type in any words that should never appear in your chat. This might be the name of a competitor, offensive words, or anything else that could damage the visitor experience and your reputation.

Simply separate each word with a comma.

Again, don’t forget to click on ‘Save Settings’ to store your changes.

There are lots more settings to explore, so it’s worth looking through them and seeing what changes you can make. However, this is all you need to create a simple chat room, so let’s see how you can add it to your WordPress website.

How to Display Your Chat Room in WordPress

When you are happy with how the chat room is set up, scroll down to the Shortcode & Template Tag area and click to open it.

Here, you’ll see the shortcode that you can add to any page, post, or widget-ready area.

To add the chat room to a page, simply go to Pages » Add New in the WordPress dashboard.

You can now type in a title, upload a featured image, add categories and tags, plus any other content that you want to show on the page.

You might even go one step further and add a user experience feedback survey so you can get valuable suggestions and ideas on how to improve your chat room.

To embed the chat room, click on the ‘+’ sign and then type in ‘Shortcode.’ You can now select the right block when it appears.

After that, just add the [sac_happens] shortcode to the Shortcode block.

You can now click on ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ to make the chat room live.

Another option is adding the chat room to a widget-ready area. This is an easy way to show the chat window across multiple pages.

If you are using one of the newer block-based themes, then you can even add the chat room to areas of your site you can’t edit using the standard WordPress content editor.

For step-by-step instructions, please see our guide on how to add and use widgets.

No matter how you add the chat room to WordPress, it’s important to check that it looks good and works correctly across all devices, by testing the mobile version of your website.

For more on this topic, please see our expert tips on creating a mobile-friendly website.

We hope this article helped you learn how to create chat rooms for your WordPress users. You can also see our guides on how to add reaction buttons to boost engagement, and how to do a UX audit of your WordPress website.

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