SiteChat Documentation

Overview

SiteChat is a WordPress plugin that turns your existing site content into an automated question-and-answer assistant. When a visitor types a question into the chat widget, SiteChat searches your indexed pages, posts, and custom post types to find the most relevant answer and displays it instantly.

Unlike chatbots that rely on external AI services, SiteChat runs entirely on your server. It uses TF-IDF (Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency) keyword extraction to match visitor questions against your content. There are no API keys to configure, no per-message costs, and no data sent to third-party services. Your content stays on your server and your visitors get immediate answers.

SiteChat also supports manual Q&A pairs for questions that your content doesn't explicitly address, giving you full control over what visitors see. The chat widget is lightweight, customizable, and designed to blend with any theme.

Installation

SiteChat is installed like any standard WordPress plugin. Download the .zip file from your Boulley Technology account. In your WordPress admin, navigate to Plugins › Add New › Upload Plugin, select the ZIP file, and click Install Now.

Once installed, click Activate. SiteChat registers itself under Tools › SiteChat in the admin menu. On first activation, the plugin automatically begins scanning your published pages and posts to build its content index. Depending on the size of your site, this initial scan may take a few seconds to a couple of minutes.

SiteChat requires PHP 7.4 or higher and WordPress 5.8+. It has no external PHP dependencies and does not require any third-party API credentials. The plugin uses your site's existing database to store indexed content, Q&A pairs, and chat logs.

Dashboard

The SiteChat dashboard is your central overview. It displays key statistics at a glance, including the total number of indexed content items, active Q&A pairs, conversations in the last 7 days, and your current match rate (the percentage of visitor questions that received a relevant answer).

Below the stats, you will find two panels. The Recent Chats panel shows the latest visitor conversations with timestamps and match status. The Unmatched Questions panel highlights questions where SiteChat could not find a confident match. This is useful for identifying content gaps — you can click any unmatched question to create a manual Q&A pair directly from the dashboard.

The dashboard also shows the last scan timestamp and a quick link to trigger a manual reindex if needed.

Content Scanning

Content scanning is the core mechanism that powers SiteChat's answer matching. When the plugin scans your site, it reads the title and body of each published page and post, strips HTML tags, and extracts the meaningful text content. This text is then tokenized into individual words, and each word is weighted using TF-IDF scoring to determine its importance relative to your entire site.

The initial scan runs automatically when you first activate the plugin. After that, SiteChat hooks into WordPress's save_post action to re-scan individual pieces of content whenever they are created, updated, or trashed. This means your content index stays current without any manual intervention.

The scan process is lightweight and runs in the background. It does not block page loads or affect frontend performance. Each content item is processed independently, so updating a single post only re-indexes that one item rather than rescanning the entire site.

Content Sources

The Content Sources tab lets you control which content types SiteChat indexes. By default, all published pages and posts are included. You can enable or disable specific post types using the toggle switches on this tab.

For more granular control, you can exclude individual posts or pages by adding them to the exclusion list. This is useful if you have pages like your privacy policy or terms of service that you don't want appearing as chat answers.

You can also filter by category or tag. For example, if you run a blog with both product-related posts and personal posts, you can limit SiteChat to only index posts in your "Products" or "FAQ" categories.

The Reindex All button at the bottom of this tab forces a complete rescan of all included content. Use this after making bulk changes to your inclusion or exclusion rules, or if you suspect the index has become stale.

Manual Q&A

Manual Q&A pairs let you define specific keyword-to-answer mappings that take priority over auto-scanned content. This is ideal for frequently asked questions that aren't explicitly covered in your pages, or for cases where you want to provide a more concise answer than what appears on a page.

To add a Q&A pair, go to Tools › SiteChat › Q&A and click Add New. Enter one or more trigger keywords or phrases in the "Keywords" field (comma-separated), and write your answer in the "Response" field. The response supports basic HTML formatting including bold, italic, links, and line breaks.

When a visitor asks a question, SiteChat checks manual Q&A pairs first. If any of the trigger keywords match the visitor's question with sufficient confidence, the manual answer is returned instead of an auto-scanned result. If no manual pair matches, SiteChat falls back to the content index.

The Basic plan supports up to 50 manual Q&A pairs. Standard and Agency plans have no limit on the number of pairs you can create.

Widget Customization

The chat widget is the frontend component that visitors interact with. It appears as a floating chat bubble in the bottom corner of your site and expands into a conversation window when clicked.

You can customize the following aspects of the widget from Tools › SiteChat › Widget:

• Bot Name — The name displayed in the chat header. Default is "SiteChat." You might change this to your brand name or something like "Support Assistant."
• Avatar — Upload a custom avatar image or use the default robot icon. The avatar appears in the chat header and next to bot messages.
• Primary Color — Controls the chat header background, send button, and visitor bubble color. Enter any hex color code to match your site's branding.
• Position — Choose where the chat bubble appears: bottom-right (default), bottom-left, middle-right, or middle-left.
• Font Family — Select from 9 font options to match your site's typography, including system defaults, serif, and popular web fonts.
• Font Size — Choose from 4 size presets to control the text size within the chat widget.
• Widget Roundness — Pick from 4 border-radius presets to control how rounded the widget corners appear, from sharp to fully rounded.
• Greeting Message — The first message the bot displays when a visitor opens the chat window. Use this to introduce the bot and suggest what kinds of questions it can answer.
• Fallback Message — The response shown when SiteChat cannot find a confident match for the visitor's question. You might direct them to your contact page or suggest rephrasing their question.

All changes take effect immediately on save. You can preview the widget by visiting any page on your site.

Quick Replies

Quick replies are clickable suggestion buttons displayed below the greeting message when a visitor first opens the chat widget. They give visitors common starting questions to click instead of typing, which reduces friction and guides them toward the most useful answers.

SiteChat generates default quick replies automatically based on the most frequently matched content in your index. You can override these with custom quick reply buttons from the Widget settings tab.

Each quick reply consists of a short label (displayed on the button) and the full question text that gets sent when clicked. For example, a button labeled "Shipping Info" might send the question "What are your shipping options and delivery times?" to SiteChat.

You can add up to 4 quick reply buttons. Keep the labels short — ideally under 25 characters — so they display cleanly on mobile devices.

Rich Card Responses

Q&A answers can include rich card components that display structured information in a visually appealing format. Cards are defined using a special shortcode syntax within your answer text.

To add a card, wrap the card fields inside [card]...[/card] tags in your Q&A response. Each field goes on its own line in key: value format:

Available fields (all optional):

• image: — URL to an image shown at the top of the card
• title: — bold title text
• price: — large price display
• badge: — green badge label (e.g., "Sale", "New", "Popular")
• description: — short description text
• link: — URL the button links to
• button: — button text (defaults to "View" if link is set without button text)

Example: Product Pricing Response

When creating a Q&A pair, put the card syntax in the Answer field:

Keywords: pricing, how much, cost, plans

Answer:

When a visitor asks "how much does it cost?", instead of plain text they will see a styled card with the image, title, price badge, description, and a clickable button — like a product card inside the chat.

Example: Multiple Cards

You can mix regular text and multiple cards in a single answer:

The text before and after the cards renders as normal chat messages. Each [card]...[/card] block renders as a separate visual card with rounded corners, optional image, and an action button in your brand color.

Text Formatting

In addition to cards, Q&A answers support basic text formatting:

• **bold text** — renders as bold text
• [link text](https://url) — renders as a clickable link

Business Hours

Business hours let you define your operating schedule so the chat widget can adjust its behavior when you are offline. When enabled, SiteChat checks the current time against your configured hours to determine whether to show the standard greeting or an offline message.

Configure business hours from the Widget settings. Toggle the feature on, then set the opening and closing times for each day of the week (Monday through Sunday). Each day can have its own schedule, so you can set different hours for weekdays versus weekends, or mark specific days as closed.

Select your timezone from the dropdown to ensure the schedule aligns with your actual business location. The Offline Message field lets you customize what visitors see when they open the chat outside of business hours. For example, "We're currently offline. Leave us a message and we'll get back to you during business hours."

When outside business hours, the chat widget still appears on your site, but the greeting message is replaced with your offline message. Visitors can still browse existing Q&A content and receive automated answers.

Pre-Chat Form

The pre-chat form collects visitor information before the conversation begins, turning your chat widget into a lead generation tool. When enabled, visitors are prompted to enter their name and email address before they can start chatting.

You can configure which fields are required and customize the form message that appears above the input fields. The form message might say something like "Please introduce yourself so we can assist you better."

Visitor information is saved to the browser's localStorage, so returning visitors do not need to fill out the form again. Once a visitor has provided their details, they go straight to the chat on subsequent visits.

If a visitor provides their name, SiteChat uses it to personalize the greeting message. Instead of a generic "Hi there!", the visitor might see "Hi Sarah!" making the experience feel more personal.

Chat History

SiteChat automatically saves conversation history to the visitor's browser using localStorage. When a visitor returns to your site within 24 hours, their previous conversation is restored in the chat window with a "Previous conversation" divider separating old messages from new ones.

A maximum of 50 messages are stored per conversation. If a conversation exceeds this limit, the oldest messages are removed to keep storage manageable.

Visitors can click the Start Over option to clear their conversation history and begin a fresh session. This removes all stored messages and resets the chat widget to its initial greeting state.

Suggested Questions

After SiteChat delivers an answer, up to 3 related questions are displayed as clickable pill buttons below the response. These suggestions help visitors discover relevant follow-up information without having to think of what to ask next.

Suggested questions are generated automatically from two sources. First, SiteChat looks at your other Q&A pairs and finds ones that share keyword overlap with the current answer. Second, it searches your indexed content using FULLTEXT matching to find related pages or posts. The most relevant matches are surfaced as suggestions.

When a visitor clicks a suggested question, it is sent as a new message in the chat, just as if they had typed it themselves. This creates a natural browsing flow where visitors can explore your content conversationally.

Page Rules

Page rules let you control which pages of your site display the chat widget. By default, SiteChat shows the widget on all pages.

Three modes are available:

• Show on all pages — The default behavior. The chat widget appears on every page of your site.
• Only show on specific pages — The widget is hidden everywhere except the pages you select. Use this if you only want chat on your homepage, contact page, or product pages.
• Hide on specific pages — The widget appears on all pages except the ones you select. Use this to exclude pages like checkout, login, or admin-facing pages.

A checklist of all your published pages and posts is displayed so you can select exactly which ones to include or exclude. Changes take effect immediately after saving.

Typing Speed

Typing speed controls how long the typing indicator (the animated dots) is displayed before SiteChat reveals its answer. This simulates the experience of a real person composing a response.

Four speed levels are available:

• Fast — 0.3x multiplier. The typing indicator appears very briefly before the answer is shown.
• Natural — 1x multiplier (default). A balanced speed that feels conversational without making visitors wait too long.
• Slow — 1.8x multiplier. A more deliberate pace for a thoughtful feel.
• Very Slow — 3x multiplier. The longest delay, useful if you want to emphasize the "thinking" effect.

The typing duration also scales with message length, so longer answers have a proportionally longer typing indicator regardless of the speed level selected.

Button Animation

The chat toggle button (the floating bubble visitors click to open the widget) can be animated to draw attention. Six animation styles are available:

• Bounce — The button gently bounces up and down.
• Pulse — A subtle scaling pulse effect.
• Slide In — The button slides into view from below.
• Fade In — The button fades in gradually.
• Jiggle — A playful side-to-side wiggle.
• Heartbeat — A rhythmic double-pulse like a heartbeat.

You can also select None for a static button with no animation. The animation is applied when the page loads and the chat button first appears.

Sound Customization

SiteChat can play a notification sound when the bot sends a response. Seven built-in sounds are available: Chime, Ding, Pop, Bubble, Bell, Knock, and Whoosh.

All sounds are generated dynamically using the Web Audio API. No audio files are loaded or downloaded, which means zero impact on page load performance. The sounds are synthesized in the browser at the moment they are needed.

Each sound option includes a Preview button in the settings panel so you can listen before selecting. You can also disable notification sounds entirely if you prefer a silent chat experience.

Multilingual

Multilingual support allows SiteChat to serve answers in multiple languages. When enabled, each Q&A pair can be tagged with a language code (such as en, fr, es, de, etc.) or set to "All Languages" if the answer applies regardless of language.

SiteChat detects the visitor's preferred language automatically from their browser settings. When a visitor asks a question, SiteChat prioritizes Q&A pairs that match the visitor's language, then falls back to pairs tagged with "All Languages."

If you use WPML or Polylang, SiteChat integrates with their language detection automatically. Instead of relying on the browser language, SiteChat uses the language determined by your translation plugin for more accurate matching on multilingual WordPress sites.

A default language can be configured in the settings. This is used as the fallback when the visitor's language cannot be determined or when no language-specific Q&A pairs exist for their language.

File Sharing

File sharing allows visitors to upload files directly within the chat widget. When enabled, a paperclip icon appears next to the message input field. Visitors can click it to select a file from their device, or drag and drop a file into the chat window.

Supported file types include images (JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP), documents (PDF, DOC, DOCX), and plain text files. The maximum file size is 5 MB by default and follows your WordPress media upload settings. Uploaded files are processed through WordPress's standard wp_handle_upload function, which means they are stored in your media library and subject to your existing upload security rules.

When a visitor uploads an image, a thumbnail preview is displayed inline in the chat conversation. Other file types show as a clickable attachment link with the filename and file size. File uploads are logged alongside the conversation in your chat logs, so you can review any attachments visitors have sent.

File sharing is available on all plans and can be toggled on or off from the Settings tab.

Email Handoff

Email handoff lets SiteChat transfer a conversation to your team via email when the bot cannot resolve a visitor's question. After a fallback response (where no confident content match was found), the visitor is offered a "Send to Support" button. Clicking it opens a brief form where the visitor can enter their name, email address, and an optional message.

When submitted, SiteChat compiles the full conversation history and sends it as a formatted HTML email to the address you configure in Settings. The email includes the visitor's question, the bot's responses, timestamps, and the visitor's contact information so your team can follow up directly.

The handoff email address is set under Settings › Email Handoff. You can use any email address — your support inbox, a help desk system, or a personal address. The email is sent through WordPress's wp_mail function, so it respects any SMTP configuration you have in place.

Email handoff is available on all plans. It bridges the gap between automated answers and human support, ensuring visitors always have a path to getting help.

Email Transcript

Email transcript allows visitors to send themselves a copy of their chat conversation by email. A small envelope icon appears in the chat header. When clicked, the visitor enters their email address, and SiteChat sends the full conversation as a formatted email.

The transcript email includes every message exchanged — both the visitor's questions and SiteChat's responses — formatted as a clean, readable conversation thread with timestamps. This is useful for visitors who want to save product information, instructions, or answers for later reference.

Transcripts are sent through WordPress's wp_mail function. The email's "From" name and address use your WordPress site name and admin email by default. If you have a custom SMTP plugin configured, transcripts will be sent through your SMTP provider for better deliverability.

Email transcript is available on all plans and can be toggled on or off from the Settings tab.

Emoji Picker

The emoji picker adds a smiley face icon next to the chat input field. When clicked, it opens a grid of commonly used emojis that visitors can insert into their messages with a single click.

The picker includes a curated set of the most popular emojis organized by category: smileys, gestures, objects, and symbols. Clicking an emoji inserts it at the cursor position in the message input field. Visitors can also type emoji characters directly using their device's native emoji keyboard.

The emoji picker is lightweight and renders using native Unicode characters, so there are no image files to load. It works consistently across all browsers and devices. The picker panel closes automatically when the visitor clicks outside it or sends their message.

The emoji picker is enabled by default on all plans and can be toggled from the Settings tab.

Canned Responses

Canned responses are pre-written reply templates designed for use alongside email handoff. While Q&A pairs are visitor-facing answers triggered by keyword matching, canned responses are templates for your support team to use when replying to handed-off conversations.

Manage canned responses from the Q&A tab, in the section below the Q&A pairs list. Each canned response has a title (for quick identification) and a body (the full response text). When you receive a handoff email and need to reply, you can reference your canned responses for consistent, pre-approved messaging.

Common uses for canned responses include:

• Standard follow-up messages after a support handoff
• Refund or return policy explanations
• Scheduling or appointment booking instructions
• Links to external resources or documentation

Canned responses are available on all plans. There is no limit on the number of canned responses you can create.

Conversation Tags

Conversation tags automatically categorize each chat interaction based on the topic of the visitor's question. When a message is processed, SiteChat analyzes the keywords and assigns one or more tags from a predefined set of categories.

The default tag categories include:

• Pricing — Questions about cost, pricing, plans, or discounts
• Support — Help requests, troubleshooting, or issue reports
• Shipping — Delivery, tracking, or shipping-related questions
• Returns — Refund, return, or exchange inquiries
• Product — Questions about specific products or features
• Account — Login, registration, or account management
• General — Questions that do not fit other categories

Tags appear in the chat logs alongside each conversation entry. You can filter logs by tag to quickly find conversations on a specific topic. This makes it easy to identify trends — for example, if you notice a spike in "Returns" tags, it might indicate a product quality issue worth investigating.

Conversation tagging is automatic and requires no configuration. Tags are available on all plans.

A/B Testing

A/B testing lets you experiment with different greeting messages to see which one drives more engagement. Instead of a single greeting, you can define multiple variants, and SiteChat randomly assigns each visitor to one variant for the duration of their session.

To set up A/B testing, go to Settings and find the Greeting section. Click Add Variant to create additional greeting messages. Each variant gets a label (e.g., "Variant A", "Variant B") and its own greeting text. Visitors are randomly assigned to a variant when they first open the chat, and they see the same variant throughout their session.

SiteChat tracks which greeting variant each visitor received and correlates it with their engagement — whether they sent a message, how many messages they exchanged, and whether they used a quick reply. You can review variant performance from the Analytics tab to determine which greeting message produces better results.

A/B testing is available on the Standard and Agency plans. You can run up to 4 variants simultaneously.

Proactive Triggers

Proactive triggers automatically open the chat widget or display a prompt based on visitor behavior, without the visitor having to click the chat button first. This can significantly increase engagement by reaching visitors at the right moment.

Three trigger types are available:

• Timer — Opens the chat widget after the visitor has been on the page for a specified number of seconds. For example, you might trigger the chat after 30 seconds on your pricing page to offer help with plan selection.
• Scroll Depth — Triggers when the visitor scrolls past a certain percentage of the page. For instance, triggering at 50% scroll depth on a long product page suggests the visitor is interested and might have questions.
• Exit Intent — Detects when the visitor's mouse moves toward the browser's close or back button, suggesting they are about to leave. The chat opens with a message like "Before you go — can I help with anything?" to re-engage them.

Each trigger fires only once per session to avoid annoying visitors. Once a trigger has fired, it will not fire again until the visitor starts a new browsing session. You can configure trigger settings (delay in seconds, scroll percentage) and customize the proactive message from the Settings tab.

Proactive triggers are available on the Standard and Agency plans.

Welcome Back Messages

When a returning visitor opens the chat widget, SiteChat recognizes them and displays a personalized welcome-back message instead of the standard greeting. This creates a warmer, more personal experience for repeat visitors.

SiteChat uses localStorage to remember visitors across sessions. If a visitor provided their name through the pre-chat form, the welcome-back message includes their name — for example, "Welcome back, Sarah!" If no name is available, a generic welcome-back message is shown, such as "Welcome back! How can I help you today?"

The welcome-back message is distinct from the greeting message and can be customized separately. It appears only for visitors who have previously interacted with the chat widget on your site. First-time visitors always see the standard greeting (or A/B test variant).

If the visitor had a previous conversation within the last 24 hours, their chat history is also restored below the welcome-back message, allowing them to pick up where they left off.

Welcome-back messages are available on all plans and are enabled automatically when chat history is active.

How Matching Works

SiteChat uses a technique called TF-IDF (Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency) to match visitor questions to your content. Here is a simplified explanation of how it works.

When SiteChat indexes a piece of content, it breaks the text into individual words (tokens) and calculates two values for each word:

• Term Frequency (TF) — How often the word appears in that specific piece of content. Words that appear frequently in a document are considered more relevant to that document.
• Inverse Document Frequency (IDF) — How common or rare the word is across all your indexed content. Words that appear in many documents (like "the" or "and") get a low IDF score, while words unique to a few documents (like "warranty" or "refund") get a high score.

The TF and IDF values are multiplied together to produce a TF-IDF score for each word in each document. When a visitor asks a question, SiteChat extracts the keywords from their message, looks up the TF-IDF scores across all indexed content, and ranks documents by their combined relevance score.

The document with the highest score is selected as the best match. SiteChat then extracts the most relevant paragraph or section from that document to display as the answer, rather than showing the entire page content.

A minimum confidence threshold prevents SiteChat from returning weak matches. If no content scores above the threshold, the fallback message is displayed instead. You can adjust the confidence threshold from the settings if you find matches are too strict or too loose.

Chat Logs

Chat logs are available on the Standard and Agency plans. They provide a complete record of every conversation that occurs through your chat widget.

Each log entry includes the visitor's question, SiteChat's response, the content source that was matched (or "No Match" if the fallback was triggered), a timestamp, and the page the visitor was on when they asked the question.

The chat logs view includes a search bar for filtering by keyword and date range filters for narrowing results. You can search for specific questions, product names, or any text that appears in either the question or response.

Conversations can be exported as CSV for analysis in spreadsheet software. The export includes all fields: question, response, source, timestamp, page URL, match confidence score, and session identifier.

Analytics

The Analytics tab is available on the Standard and Agency plans. It provides visual charts and metrics that help you understand how effectively SiteChat is serving your visitors.

Key metrics include:

• Match Rate — The percentage of questions that received a confident content match (above the threshold). A higher match rate indicates that your content covers visitor questions well.
• Top Questions — The most frequently asked questions, ranked by volume. This shows you what visitors care about most and helps prioritize content creation.
• Unmatched Questions — Questions where SiteChat could not find a good match. These highlight content gaps and opportunities to add manual Q&A pairs.
• Conversations Over Time — A line chart showing daily or weekly conversation volume. Useful for spotting trends and correlating with traffic changes.
• Top Sources — The pages and posts most frequently matched as answers. This tells you which content is doing the most work.

Analytics data is retained for 90 days by default. You can adjust the retention period in settings or export data before it expires.

WooCommerce Integration

WooCommerce integration is available on the Standard and Agency plans. When enabled, SiteChat indexes your WooCommerce products in addition to pages and posts.

For each product, SiteChat indexes the product title, short description, full description, price, sale price, SKU, and visible attributes (like size, color, or material). This allows visitors to ask product-related questions and receive accurate answers pulled from your catalog.

To enable WooCommerce scanning, go to Content Sources and toggle on the Products post type. SiteChat will include products in the next index scan. Product data is automatically re-indexed whenever a product is updated, just like regular posts and pages.

Example questions visitors might ask and get answers for:

• "How much does the wireless keyboard cost?"
• "What sizes do the running shoes come in?"
• "Is the bamboo desk currently on sale?"
• "What material is the laptop sleeve made of?"

White-Label

White-label mode is available exclusively on the Agency plan. It allows you to remove all SiteChat branding from the chat widget, making it appear as a fully custom feature of your client's site.

When white-label is enabled:

• The "Powered by SiteChat" footer text is removed from the chat widget.
• The default SiteChat robot avatar is replaced with a generic chat icon (or your custom uploaded avatar).
• All admin-facing references to "SiteChat" can be hidden via the white-label settings.
• A custom CSS injection field allows you to add additional styling rules to the widget without editing plugin files.

White-label mode is toggled from Tools › SiteChat › Settings › White-Label. The changes take effect on the frontend immediately after saving.

License Activation

SiteChat is a paid plugin. All three tiers (Basic, Standard, Agency) require a valid license key to activate and receive updates.

To activate your license, go to Tools › SiteChat › License. Enter the license key you received after purchase (it looks like SCBS-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX for Basic, SCST-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX for Standard, or SCAG-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX for Agency) and click Activate. SiteChat validates the key against the Boulley Technology license server and binds it to your domain.

Each license key is valid for one domain (Basic and Standard) or unlimited domains (Agency). If you need to move a license to a different site, deactivate it first from the License tab, then activate it on the new domain. You can also manage your licenses from your Boulley Technology account portal.

License keys are annual. Your key remains active for 12 months from the date of purchase and renews automatically unless cancelled. When your license expires, SiteChat continues to function but stops receiving updates and loses access to tier-specific features like chat logs and analytics.

Troubleshooting

Widget Not Showing on the Frontend

If the chat widget does not appear on your site, first check that SiteChat is activated in Plugins. Then verify that the widget is enabled under Tools › SiteChat › Widget — the "Enable Widget" toggle must be on. If your theme uses aggressive caching or a page cache plugin, clear all caches and reload. Also check for JavaScript errors in the browser console that might indicate a conflict with another plugin.

Poor Match Quality

If SiteChat returns irrelevant answers, the most common cause is thin content. Pages with very little text give the matching engine less to work with. Try adding more detailed content to your key pages, or create manual Q&A pairs for the specific questions visitors are asking. You can also adjust the confidence threshold in Settings — raising it prevents weak matches from being returned.

Reindex Not Working

If clicking "Reindex All" does not seem to update the content index, check that your server has not hit a PHP memory or execution time limit. Large sites with thousands of posts may need a higher max_execution_time value in php.ini. SiteChat indexes content in batches, but very large sites may still hit limits on shared hosting. Check your PHP error log for timeout or memory errors.

Chat Widget Styling Conflicts

If the chat widget looks broken or has unexpected styling, another plugin or your theme's CSS may be interfering. SiteChat scopes its styles carefully, but aggressive global CSS resets can override widget styles. Use the custom CSS field in the Widget settings to add corrective rules, or check your browser's developer tools to identify which external styles are conflicting.

WooCommerce Products Not Appearing

If WooCommerce products are not being matched, verify that the "Products" post type is toggled on in Content Sources. Also confirm that WooCommerce is active — if it was deactivated and reactivated, run a manual reindex to refresh the product data. Products must be published and visible (not private or draft) to be indexed.

FAQ