How to Allow Guest Chat on Ustream

Do you broadcast on Ustream?  One thing that annoys me that you may have noticed about your stream and mine is that the chat room doesn’t allow guests anymore (it did in the past).  It forces you to log in or register for a Ustream account before you can participate in the discussion.  I hate this restriction because the majority of my community is from my site, not the Ustream network.  I want people to be able to participate in the show, and I’m sure you feel the same way about your own show.

I did some searching and found several methods, one of which being to link your Ustream channel with an IRC client, which I do anyway to display the chat on the monitor that sits behind me.  However, the IRC client I use doesn’t allow you to embed its chat on your site.  I was close to switching to another IRC client when I found a forum post on Ustream that showed me the easiest method.  All you have to do is type the following code into your chat room:

/mode #yourchannel -m

Here’s the proof that it works.  This is a screenshot of the chat room on unitedtechguys.wordpress.com/live/.  Anyone whose name begins with “ustreamer” is a guest.

I’ve come to realize that you have to stay in the room after entering the code or it will time out.

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