Attendees reach the room through the private link in their confirmation and reminder emails. A link without a valid token is redirected to the registration page instead.
What happens in the room:
- Before the start time the room shows a live countdown
- At start time an Enter Webinar button appears, which satisfies the browser rule that sound needs a click before it plays
- Playback is positioned from the server clock, so everybody sees the same moment and a latecomer drops in where the session actually is
- There is no scrub bar, and playback is corrected if it drifts out of sync
- On a live broadcast, people already waiting in the room pick the stream up the moment you start, without refreshing
- When the session has run its length, the room shows a thank you panel with a link to the replay
The side rail:
The rail shows the session state, an attendee counter and the chat. The counter is the number of distinct attendees whose heartbeat has been seen in the last two minutes. The room also announces people as they arrive, and shows when the host is typing, so an automated webinar feels as alive as a live one.
How attendees take part:
- Chat. Attendees type a message of up to 500 characters, once every five seconds.
- Reactions. A tap on an emoji floats it up the chat column for everyone in the room. Reactions are counted and never stored as messages, so a room full of tapping costs your site nothing.
- Questions. The question button sends a message to you privately instead of the room. It lands in your queue in the Host Chat Console.
- Raised hands. The hand button is a one tap signal that also lands in your queue.
- Polls. When a poll appears they pick an answer, and see live results if you switched that on.
- Handouts. Links you release appear in the room and stay there.
- The host can pin one message to the top of the chat, and it stays visible above the messages for everyone.
Reactions and questions belong to the live room. A replay is watched alone, so it offers neither, and its chat is closed.
How chat is delivered:
Attendees never poll PHP for the chat. Every write rebuilds a single small JSON file in your uploads folder, and the room reads that static file every three seconds. Posting a message is the only request that touches PHP, and only a fraction of attendees ever type. The chat design targets around 500 attendees on ordinary hosting. There is no hard attendee cap coded into the plugin, and true capacity depends on your host, so test at the scale you expect before a big promotion.
Simulated chat:
On the Chat History tab you can add scripted lines that appear at set times into the webinar, written as minutes and seconds. They merge into the same feed as real messages and are sorted by time alongside them. Click Generate with AI to draft fourteen realistic lines spread across the webinar, based on your own slides, with greetings early, reactions in the middle and buying interest later. Edit anything you do not like.
Switching the chat off:
The Room chat on or off card on the Chat History tab has one tick that hides the whole side panel for attendees: chat, reactions, questions, polls and handouts. The webinar then plays full width, in the live room and on the replay. Your Host Chat Console and chat history are unaffected.
Moderating the room:
Hold messages for approval, let AI screen them, remove anything you do not want and block someone from the Host Chat Console. See The Host Chat Console.
If the chat folder is not writable:
Diagnostics checks this and the Chat History tab warns you. Ask your host to make the WordPress uploads folder writable so the fast static delivery can be used. Until then chat switches to a slower delivery method by itself, so it keeps working.