ConnectSphere

Description

Sending a Zoom or Meet link pulls learners off your course site, breaks your branding, and leaves attendance to a third-party tab. ConnectSphere embeds a live classroom on your own pages: camera, microphone, public and private chat, and screen sharing, using the Janus WebRTC Gateway you control.

Who it is for

• Course authors who want a live session inside a lesson page, not a separate meeting URL.
• Tutors and training teams who already run WordPress and can host (or commission) a Janus server.
• Sites that must keep media on infrastructure they choose (self-hosted gateway + STUN/TURN).

What you get in the room

• Video, audio, public chat, private chat, screen sharing
• Raise Hand, live participant count, connection-quality bars (RTT + packet loss)
• Leave (stops camera/mic and releases WebRTC resources)
• Dark or Light room theme (front-end only)
• French translation included

What this plugin is not

ConnectSphere is not a hosted video SaaS. It is a WordPress front-end for your Janus Videoroom + Textroom. A shared demo gateway is included so you can click around; it is unmonitored and not for paying students. Production use needs a dedicated Janus server with TLS/WSS and a TURN server for users behind strict NAT.

Insert the room with [connectsphere_room] or the ConnectSphere Room block. Settings live under the ConnectSphere admin menu.

Compatibility

• Tested up to WordPress 7.0.

New Features

• Participant counter: The participants panel now shows a live count of people in the room.
• Raise Hand: New button lets participants signal the host. A hand icon (✋) appears on the video bubble and in the participant list for all attendees.
• Connection quality indicator: Three-bar signal indicator in the control bar, powered by WebRTC getStats() (RTT + packet loss).
• Light theme: New color theme option in Settings > ConnectSphere > Room Appearance. Dark (default) or Light — with a live preview in the settings page.
• Leave button: Cleanly stops camera/mic tracks, releases all WebRTC handles, and resets the room state. Previously, leaving was only possible by closing the tab.
• Auto-join after create: Creating a room now immediately joins it. No need to click « Join » separately.

UX & Architecture

• Status ticker now spans full width below the control buttons, no longer squeezed to a few pixels.
• Join logic extracted into performJoin() to eliminate duplicated code between the Create and Join flows.
• Professional Janus server installation service documented in FAQ and admin settings page.

Bug Fixes & i18n

• Fixed missing load_plugin_textdomain() — PHP-side translations now load correctly.
• Fixed broken ICE retry paths that referenced undeclared videoroomHandle / textroomHandle variables (now correctly using videoroom / textroom).
• Fixed notification sound using a site-root absolute path; now uses the correct plugin URL via connectSphere.plugin_url.
• Removed dead wp_ajax_connectsphere_join_room registration (endpoint was never called from the front-end).
• Fixed PHP fatal error risk: apostrophe inside single-quoted string in capabilities check.
• All remaining hard-coded French strings in PHP and JS replaced with English base strings wrapped in i18n functions.
• Added missing CSS classes: .unread-badge, .new-message-highlight, .disabled, .hand-raised.
• plugin_url added to localized JS data; removed unused ajax_url / nonce.

1.5.0

(2026-04-25)

User Experience & Admin Ergonomics

• Shortcode Quick-Copy: Added a dedicated « Usage » section in the settings page featuring a one-click copy button for the [connectsphere_room] shortcode.
• Copy Feedback: Integrated a visual « Copied! » confirmation using WordPress native Dashicons for a better user experience.

Internal Logic & i18n

• JS Dependency Update: Added sprintf to the wp-i18n imports in connectsphere.js to support complex dynamic translations.

1.4.0 (2026-04-24)

Internationalization (i18n) & Localization

• Full Multilingual Support: Added Domain Path for native translation.
• wp-i18n Integration: Scripts now explicitly depend on wp-i18n for secure string translation.
• String Standardization: All UI messages harmonized to English for global compatibility.

Improved Resilience & Performance

• Aggressive Reconnection Logic: Reduced reconnection timeouts from 15 seconds to 4 seconds for both videoroom and textroom plugins. This ensures much faster recovery after network drops.
• Enhanced Connection Stability: Refined the Janus initialization flow to handle session drops more proactively.
• Version Bump: Updated to 1.4.0 to force cache refreshing for all assets.

1.3.1 (2026-04-24)

Sécurité & Stabilité

• Renforcement de la sécurité (Nonce) : Correction de la faille de vérification des jetons de sécurité dans l’administration. Désormais, les réglages sont protégés par check_admin_referer pour prévenir les attaques CSRF.
• Optimisation du chargement des scripts : Les fichiers JS (Janus, adapter.js) et CSS ne sont plus chargés sur tout le site. Ils sont désormais injectés uniquement sur les pages utilisant le shortcode [connectsphere_room], améliorant drastiquement les performances du site.

Interface & Responsive

• Full Responsive Design : Refonte complète du CSS pour mobile et tablette. La grille vidéo et la barre de contrôle s’adaptent désormais parfaitement aux petits écrans.
• Z-Index Fix : Ajustement de la profondeur de l’interface pour garantir la visibilité des menus de navigation WordPress au-dessus du salon vidéo.

1.3.0 (2026-04-23)

UI Overhaul, Ad-Free & CSS Refactoring

• Removed all integrated advertisements: Banners and marketing popups are now gone for a 100% professional experience.
• New Activity Log Ticker: Replaced intrusive « Toast » notifications with a sleek, terminal-style status bar in the control panel.
• Cyber-Terminal Aesthetics: Implemented scrolling marquee effects for system messages to prevent blocking the video grid.
• CSS Refactoring: Completely reorganized the stylesheet. Cleaned up legacy notification styles and unminified key components for better maintainability.
• Layout Stabilization: Fixed the 100vw horizontal overflow bug and optimized control bar responsiveness using modern Flexbox.
• Cleanup: Removed unused DOM manipulation logic from the JS core to improve performance.

1.2.0

Enhanced screen-sharing support with explicit media direction

• Replaced generic media: { audio: true, video: true } with precise recvonly settings.
• Now explicitly sets audioRecv: true and videoRecv: true while disabling local capture.
• Ensures compatibility with system audio during screen sharing.
• Follows Janus Gateway’s recommended pattern for subscriber answer creation.

1.1.0

• 6.9 Ok
• A little too much advertisings

1.0.9

• Fixed textroom error (error_code: 422) by adding a 500ms delay for the join request and handling specific retries.
• Improved connection management with a 30-second keep-alive interval and progressive retry delays (15s, 30s, 60s).
• Public messages are now visible to all participants with username, date, time, and content.
• Resolved connection errors (DTLS alert, ICE disconnected) with better handle management.

1.0.8

• Fixed textroom errors (error_code: 415) for join and message requests by using textroom.data() to send via the WebRTC data channel.
• Public messages are now visible to all participants with username, date, time, and content.
• Improved connection error handling (DTLS alert, connection loss) with 15-second reconnection delays.
• Resolved PeerConnection errors (error_code: 416) by properly detaching handles.

1.0.7

• Fixed textroom errors (error_code: 415) for join and message requests by using the correct format (textroom: ‘join’, textroom: ‘message’).
• Public messages are now visible to all participants with username, date, time, and content.
• Improved connection error handling (DTLS alert, connection loss) with increased reconnection delays to 15 seconds.
• Resolved PeerConnection errors (error_code: 416) by properly detaching handles.

1.0.6

• Fixed chat issue: public messages are now visible to all participants with username, date, time, and content.
• Resolved textroom errors (error_code: 413) by correcting the format of join and message requests.
• Improved connection error handling (DTLS alert, connection loss).

1.0.5

• Fixed PHP syntax error in connectsphere.php (line 84).
• Improved message handling to include username, date, time, and content.

1.0.4

• Fixed chat issue: public messages are now visible to all with username, date, time, and content.
• Improved message styles for better readability.
• Fixed textroom connection errors (error_code: 415).

1.0.3

• Fixed chat styling for a dark icy background and improved text readability.

1.0.2

• Added specific CSS styles for the settings page (admin.php?page=connectsphere).
• Added dynamic resizing of input fields.
• Fixed issue with CSS styles not applying on the settings page.

1.0.1

• Added STUN/TURN server configuration in settings.
• Improved settings interface with an icy blue theme.
• Added an animated background with connected spheres.

1.0.0

• Initial release with WebRTC, chat, and integrated marketing.