When it's time for your live event, you can join the event room from the Overview page, the Registrants page, or the Event Analytics page. Click “Join event room,” then "Join as host." Wistia Live supports multiple hosts, so you can collaborate with your co-hosts to moderate chat, bring people on and off stage, and change layouts for a seamless experience.

If you’re a panelist or audience member, click the link you’ve received to join. You can also join the event by clicking the "Join event room" dropdown. From here, you can "Join as panelist" or "View as audience" as well.

If you’re the Host or a Panelist, when you click to join, enter your Display Name, and be sure to select your preferred Video, Microphone, and Speakers. Once done, click “All Set.” You can also choose whether or not you’d like to blur your camera background, use a virtual background, or join with your microphone muted or your camera off.

Once you’ve entered the live event page, you’ll see a number of options here.

When you’re ready to get started, click “Go Live” and then confirm your selection in the pop-up. Your livestream has a 7–10 second delay.

When a panelist joins, they’ll automatically be off-stage. However, hosts can click on them to bring them on-stage. You can also choose when to mute a presenter, pin them to the presenter position, or take them off-stage.

There are a number of options on the page for you to adjust your event as needed.

The audio setting (or, the Microphone button) can be used to mute or unmute your microphone. Expanding this setting will allow you to change your microphone (input) and your speaker (output), as well as toggle the following features:

*These settings are on by default - you can disable these if you’d like.

The video setting (the camera button) will turn your webcam on or off. When you expand this setting, you can change your camera source or select your webcam background.

When clicking the Share button (or, Monitor icon) to share your screen, you’ll be prompted to select your entire screen, window, or a tab.

If you need to share audio as well, be sure to select a specific tab under “Chrome Tab,” and check “Share tab audio.”

Layouts let you choose how the live event stage appears for your audience. The presenter or screenshare added to the stage will be the main display and you can choose to have your panelists shown in different positions. The options available are Tile or Full.

Clicking the Stage button will maximize or minimize your view of the stage. When the stage is maximized, the side panels and backstage view will be hidden. You can reverse this by clicking the button again.

Click the "Chat" button to collapse or expand the chat window.

In the "Audience" tab of the chat panel, you can interact with your attendees during a live event. To learn more about chatting with your audience, head over the Live Event Chat page.

If an attendee's contributions to the chat need to be removed, you can silence them so that their chat bubbles are hidden for all participants. Learn more about how to silence attendees here.

Hosts and Panelists can chat with one another (privately) in the “Backstage” tab of the chat window.

Looking for more ways to engage with the audience? Head to our Live Polls and Q&A page to learn more.

Click "Present" to add videos or slides to show during your live event. Head to the Present Media page to learn more.

Settings put you in control of how the audience can engage with your event.

As a Host, by clicking the General settings icon, you can change your display name or decide whether name tags for the Hosts and Panelists appear to the audience. You can also activate or deactivate the chat, Q&A, and polls.

As a Panelist, the General settings icon is where you’ll be able to change your display name.

Similar to Annotation links, Hosts can use External links to display a button on stage for the audience to click in real-time. You can set up a link to any page you'd like.

Access this by clicking "Settings," then the Cursor icon.

From here, add button text and the URL to the form. When you're ready, click "Add to stage."

Once on stage, the link will display in the top righthand corner. When clicked, it will take audience members to a new tab. There can only be one external link on stage at a time, but the host can create and display multiple external links throughout an event.

When you're ready to remove the link from the stage, head back into the external links form and click "Remove from stage."

For Hosts, the Support icon is the quickest way to search our Help documentation or get in touch with our amazing support team during your event. This can be found under the Settings tab.

If you’re a Host, the Invite button can be used to find event invite links for fellow Hosts, Panelists, or the Audience.

For Panelists, the Invite button will copy the Audience link to your clipboard.

When sharing the audience link, you can also add tracking to collect more analytics about your attendees. Head to the Media Analytics Overview page to learn about Campaigns, Sources, and Mediums.

When the event is over, click “End event" and then confirm your selection.

After the event ends, you'll see how many attendee chats, questions, and poll responses you received during the event. You can also download this information to a CSV file.

From here, you can also go directly to your event's analytics by clicking "View Analytics" or view the recording by selecting "View Media."

Your recording functions just like a regular media in Wistia, but with a couple of additional options. Head on over here to learn more.