Add a Chatbot to WordPress Without Editing Theme Code

HelpWink can go live on a WordPress site without opening a single theme file. The install runs through the Plugins screen, and the chat reaches your pages through WordPress's own hook system rather than through edits to a template.

What you need before you start

Two things, both of which you already have:

• The address of your website — the pages you want the assistant to answer from.
• The documents you already use to answer customers: FAQ text, PDFs, Word files, spreadsheets, or presentations.

HelpWink works from website pages, text, PDF, Word, spreadsheets or presentations. Text-based files up to 8 MB. Image-only scans need conversion first.

Install the plugin

A plugin is an additional piece of software that can be easily installed to extend the functionality of WordPress core. There are three common routes to get one onto your site.

1. From the directory. Any plugin available in the WordPress Plugins Directory can be installed via the built-in plugin installer. Go to the Plugins screen, choose Add New, search for what you need, and install from there.
2. By zip upload. You can easily add a new plugin by uploading a zip archive of the plugin from your local computer. This is the route to use when you have been given a file rather than a directory listing.
3. By SFTP. In some cases, you may need to manually upload a plugin directly using an SFTP client, into the wp-content/plugins directory. Upload the plugin folder, then return to the admin.

Activate and check compatibility

Plugins are managed from the Plugins admin screen of your WordPress site. Once the files are in place, activate the plugin from that same screen.

Before you rely on it, check whether it is being maintained. If a plugin hasn't been updated since the most recent update to WordPress core, it may be incompatible, or its compatibility may be unknown. If that is the case, hold off, or ask whoever supplied the plugin for a build that has been brought up to date.

How the chat reaches your pages without theme edits

Hooks are a way for one piece of code to interact with and modify another piece of code at specific, pre-defined spots. They make up the foundation for how plugins and themes interact with WordPress core.

Actions will run at a specific point in the execution of WordPress core, plugins, and themes. Callback functions for actions can perform a task, such as echoing output to the user. That is the mechanism a plugin uses to put the chat widget onto your pages: an action fires during page execution, the callback attached to it prints the markup, and the visitor sees the widget.

Script loading works the same way. Instead of a hand-written script tag in a template file, the plugin queues the script through the WordPress function for that job, which is described simply as queuing a script. The script is then loaded as part of the page's normal asset loading.

Keeping to this mechanism is worth the small extra effort. If you edit a parent theme's template files directly, those edits are typically lost when the theme is updated. Output delivered by a plugin through hooks lives in the plugin, not in the theme, so a theme update has nothing of yours to overwrite.

If you would rather not use the plugin route at all, HelpWink can also be added to a website with a snippet, or shared by its link and QR code.

Add your existing help center content

Add your website, upload your documents, or paste the essentials. That is the whole input path.

• Website pages. Give the site address and let it read the pages you point at.
• Text-based files. PDF, Word, spreadsheets, and presentations, up to 8 MB per file.
• Scanned files. Convert them to text first, as noted above.

What this does not do is pull from arbitrary outside sources on its own. The material the assistant answers from is what you supply: the pages you point it at and the files you upload. If a question is only answered somewhere else, such as in a forum thread you did not import, it is outside what the assistant has to work with.

Check it works, and how to turn it off

Open the site in a private window and ask a question your documents already answer. Then load a second page type, such as a single post or a product page, and confirm the widget appears there too.

To remove the chat, deactivate the plugin from the Plugins admin screen. Because the output was added through hooks, deactivating takes that output back off the page, and your theme files stay exactly as you found them.