Link Robins Shoutbox — A Live Shoutbox Widget

KBExit

Link Robins Shoutbox — A Live Shoutbox Widget

Hey everyone! Sharing my latest extension: Link Robins Shoutbox.

What it does

This extension adds a live shoutbox widget to your Flarum forum, built on top of fof/forum-widgets-core. Members can post short messages (up to 280 characters) that appear in real time, and the widget can be placed anywhere widgets are supported — sidebar, top, bottom, or full-width sections.

Features

Live updates — the widget polls every 15 seconds so new shouts appear without a page refresh (don't need realtime)
Smart button styling — automatically detects placement: icon-only square button when in the sidebar, icon + "Send" label when in top/bottom/full-width sections
Configurable height — admins can set the messages area height in the extension settings (default 320px)
Permission-aware profile links — usernames link to profiles only if the viewer has viewForum permission; otherwise the name shows as plain text
Guest-friendly — guests see the most recent 10 messages with a "Log in to shout!" prompt; members see 30 and can post
Admin moderation — only administrators can delete shouts, keeping moderation centralized
280-character limit per shout, Twitter-style
Avatar fallback — users without an avatar get a coloured letter avatar with a deterministic per-user colour
Theme-friendly — uses Flarum 2's CSS custom properties so it picks up your theme colours automatically

How it works

For members:

Find the shoutbox wherever the admin has placed it
Type a message (up to 280 characters) and hit Enter or click Send
The shout appears immediately and is visible to everyone

For guests:

They see the last 10 shouts
A "Log in to shout!" prompt appears in place of the input

For admins:

Enable the extension and place the widget via the fof/forum-widgets-core admin page
Adjust the messages area height in Admin → Extensions → Link Robins Shoutbox
Hover over any shout to reveal the delete button — admins only

Installation

composer require linkrobins/shoutbox
php flarum migrate
php flarum cache:clear

Then enable it in the admin panel and configure widget placement under fof/forum-widgets-core.

Requirements

Flarum 2.0+
PHP 8.2+
fof/forum-widgets-core installed and enabled

License

MIT

Features

Standalone /shoutbox page. The shoutbox is now available both as the sidebar widget (unchanged) and as a full-page chat at /shoutbox, reachable from a new index-sidebar nav link. The widget title also links through to the page. Both share one chat component; the page uses the normal forum layout with a full-height message area.
Permissions system. Two new permissions in the admin Permissions grid:
- linkrobins-shoutbox.shout — who can post (default: Members)
- linkrobins-shoutbox.moderate — who can delete others' shouts (default: Moderators)
  
  Users can always delete their own shouts; admins bypass. A migration seeds the defaults so existing forums keep working on upgrade.
Flood-control feedback. Hitting the post cooldown now shows a clear message instead of failing silently.

Security & performance

The list endpoint now requires viewForum, so shouts, display names, and avatars aren't exposed to guests on private forums.
Per-user cooldown on posting (HTTP 429) to prevent spam/flooding and table bloat.
Added an index on shoutbox_shouts.created_at — the polled ORDER BY created_at DESC LIMIT N was doing a filesort that worsened as shouts accumulated.
The shared latest-N list is cached for 5s to absorb the 15-second polling herd (busted immediately on create/delete); per-viewer delete rights are applied outside the cache.

Misc

Changed the extension/widget icon to a bullhorn.

Upgrade note

This release adds locale keys under linkrobins-shoutbox.forum/admin; existing translations fall back to English for new keys until updated. Run migrations on upgrade to seed the new permission defaults.

MaxDob

KBExit Great job! Thank you! But I have a request. Is it possible to implement it so that there is only a separate page without a widget? In other words, is it possible to avoid placing the widget on the main page? I want the add-on to work as a separate page /shoutbox

KBExit

MaxDob I'll look into it!

MaxDob

KBExit Thank you again. I have edited my message above to make my point clearer.

KBExit

MaxDob I want to say that your first message was more clear than this edit 😛 I got the point, lol. You want the shoutbox as a standalone, not widget.
I'll see if there is a way to toggle it away from the Widget interface since that's how it was originally designed for.

KBExit

linkrobins/shoutboxreleases/tag/v1.3.0
Fix the broken delete (route param was read from the wrong source -> every delete 404'd). Internal rewrite to Flarum 2.0 conventions: a proper API resource + policy (the API moves from /api/shoutbox to /api/shouts) and a TypeScript frontend using ES module imports. Also bounds the shouts table to the newest 500 rows. No visible change to how the shoutbox works.

flavour1

since updating to flarum 2.0.0-rc.2 i see the shoutbox also in the item-nav > dropdown-menu > item-linkrobins-shoutbox (which is not bad at all). but i have no option in the admin panel to decide whether i want to keep the shoutbox a a widget or in the navigation list. it can only be both at the same time which makes no sense really. i could hide the item-linkrobins-shoutbox via css, but i would actually like to do it vice versa and remove the widget from the site but keep the shoutbox as a seperate page accessible via the navigation. is this possible?

KBExit

flavour1 MaxDob mentioned the same thing and I said that I'll look into it here: KBExit
However I had not been able to make the adjustments just yet. I'll get this done when I have time 🙂

Silvestrus

KBExit I can't send you private message so I will use post method. I vibe coded shoutbox on my forum and it works wonderful. It might give you some ideas, since I built it with the help of my forum members and everyone contributed with ideas (like including link preview extension and so on...). You have to be registered to see it since it is not visible to guests.

KBExit

Silvestrus I appreciate the thought. I'll check it out when I get time. Are your intentions of hoping it gets absorbed into my code?

KBExit

@MaxDob @flavour1 linkrobins/shoutboxreleases/tag/v1.3.4

Added

Display mode admin setting — choose where the shoutbox appears: Page and widget (default), Widget only, or Page only. The standalone page, sidebar nav link, and sidebar widget are shown/hidden accordingly.

Changed

A direct visit to /shoutbox now returns a proper 404 when display mode is Widget only (instead of serving the page shell and redirecting).
Full translatability (i18n): server-side validation messages, the relative-time suffixes, and the unknown-user fallback are now translatable; the timestamp date fallback respects the forum locale.

Notes

Backward compatible — the new setting defaults to Page and widget, preserving existing behavior.