How To Create Chatrooms in BuddyPress

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Wondering if you can add a chatroom to your BuddyPress website? Well, integrating a BuddyPress Chatroom Plugin to a BuddyPress site is easier than you think!

With increased access to the internet and smartphones, the appeal of online messaging and communication media has shot up among persons of all age groups. The sheer fact that these messaging services are free of cost for the end-user, has further fueled the remarkable growth of online chats and chatrooms. 

What’s more, online chats and chatrooms are no longer limited to just private communication. Today, any online business, community, or social media platform that wants to boost user engagement resorts to online chat and chatroom plugins for their website. And why not? The benefits are endless! 

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Why Add a Chatroom to Your BuddyPress Website?

‍Having a BuddyPress group chat plugin can be the ultimate makeover your website needs in a digitized world where virtual communication is the order of the day. 

A BuddyPress group chat room in your website offers both you, as the host/site owner, and your users a wide range of benefits. 

Some key benefits are:

Users can: 

• Interact with both new and known groups of people with diverse views
• Easily find and interact with people of the same or similar age, gender, interests, and goals 
• Get insights from people settled in different parts of the world

You can:

• Have very useful yet affordable feedback from live customer chat 
• Make an efficient, productive use of your workforce, as live customer chat saves your employees time and allows them to focus on higher-level activities

Both customer support and feedback happen 24/7 at a much lower cost

So, let’s take a look at the many practical benefits you can reap as you set up BuddyPress chat on your BuddyPress social network website:

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24X7 connectivity

Online chats offer the most convenient and affordable way to connect people across different time zones. When it comes to a social website, group chats and chatrooms are indispensable. BuddyPress chatrooms offer a space for users to interact with each other, share ideas, opinions, and talk about common interests. Thus, keeping true to the essence of a social network, chatrooms are a time-tested tool to bring people together. What’s more, communication is secure with invite-only and password-protected groups.

‍Independent of third-party platforms

It isn’t helpful to have a BuddyPress-run social website that depends on a third-party platform for chat services. Every time a user wants to avail of the chatroom, they will have to leave your site and connect to the third-party site. Doing this will redirect traffic away from your website and be an annoyance to users. But by setting up a BuddyPress group chat room in your site, you can ensure that your users’ engagement is focused on your site alone. 

‍Freedom to customize

An additional problem that arises from using third-party chat platforms is that you get minimum scope for customization. Whether deciding the chat window layout or weeding out problematic users, there is hardly anything within your control. But, BuddyPress chatroom plugins come with a host of customization features for the admin of the group chatrooms. Hence, you can easily manage the chat settings. You can even take the help of moderation tools to check user behavior, such as banning the use of offensive language.

Opportunities to monetize

One of the best things about BuddyPress group chat plugins is that the plugin software comes with monetization features. In other words, they let you run ads and implement membership schemes, which provides a great way to generate profits from the website. For example, you can charge money per message/per-minute basis, create membership levels, or give premium access to exclusive website features. Add to that, these plugins come with affiliate marketing options where you can run ads in the chat groups and make money.

How to Create Chatrooms for Your BuddyPress Website?

If you have a social website run by BuddyPress, you may want to set up the chatroom feature for your users. Since BuddyPress does not have an in-built chat feature, you have to use a group chat plugin like AtomChat. 

In the steps below, you will learn how to install the AtomChat plugin in your BuddyPress-powered website:

Select an AtomChat plan

AtomChat offers several plans with free trial options. So head to the AtomChat Pricing Page, choose your plan, and start the trial.

Note down your API keys

Sign in to your AtomChat account and click on the Manage option. Note down the keys under the API keys section (button on the top right). You will need the API Key, License Key, App ID, and Auth Key for later installation steps.

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‍Add AtomChat plugin to BuddyPress

Login to your BuddyPress Admin area and go to Plugins. Click on Add New. In the plugin archive, look for ‘AtomChat’ and select it. Next, click on Install Now to begin installing the plugin.

Once the plugin is active, follow these steps for its website installation:

Hover to the navigation menu on the left-hand side and click on the AtomChat tab.

Enter the License Key and Auth Key.

Click on the Install option to activate AtomChat.

‍Select a chat layout 

AtomChat has two chat layouts - docked and embedded. In docked layout, the bottom left/right area of the website gets a floating chat widget. On the other hand, the embedded layout can embed a chat feature inside any of your web pages. But it’s best to not use the two layouts together since it may interrupt the software’s smooth functioning.

How to set up the docked layout?‍

The docked layout is auto-activated when you install the AtomChat plugin. But if you want to use WordPress content editor and add the layout to a particular page of the website, you can use the following shortcode:

[atomchat layout='docked']

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‍How to set up the embedded layout?‍

With the embedded layout, you can add AtomChat to any page of your website. Use the WordPress content editor and add the following shortcode to any page of your website:

[atomchat layout='embedded' width='990' height='600']

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Syncing your contacts

When your users use their credentials to login to the website after AtomChat installation, they will be visible on the contact list.

Secure AtomChat

Go to the WordPress Admin Dashboard and click on Authentication Settings. Then, enter your Auth Key and API Key in the required fields.

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‍Now, go to the AtomChat Client Area Page and sign in to your account. Proceed to the Manage option. Then, go to Settings. Next, click on Authentication and then Security. Confirm Enable Auth Key Verification? by checking ‘Yes.’ Do the same for Enable Data Signature Validation?

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‍Now your BuddyPress-run website is all set with the AtomChat group chat plugin!

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Wrapping Up: Why Should You Use AtomChat as Your BuddyPress Chatroom Plugin?

Whether you want to build a social network website, a marketplace, an online community, or a forum, AtomChat’s features will make text, video, and group chatting super easy. If you need more clarification, let us list some AtomChat highlights that are a must-have for any social website:

• Private and group text chat ranging from invite-only exclusive groups to public or password-protected ones
• High-definition audio and video calling and conferencing
• Top-notch real-time collaborative features like whiteboard integration, screen sharing, and more
• Multilingual chat and real-time translation with 30+ languages supported in text chat
• Website monetization through ads and tiered access
• Powerful admin panel for full-fledged customizations

‍So, go ahead and explore what more AtomChat can do for your BuddyPress social website!

Sonakshi Agarwal

Sonakshi is a marketing specialist at AtomChat, who has just graduated with a bachelor's degree in communication from the University of Technology, Sydney.

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