How to add an AI chatbot to WordPress (in 5 minutes)

You need three things, and all of them take a few minutes:

• A Nexoply account. Sign up free: the Free plan includes 100 conversations a month, with no card needed.
• Your business information in Nexoply: services and prices, FAQs, policies, opening hours and service areas. The quickest way is to enter your website address and let Nexoply import your public pages; you review the suggestions and nothing is added until you approve it.
• An administrator login for your WordPress site, so you can install a plugin or edit the theme.

In your Nexoply dashboard, open the Chatbot page (click Create chatbot if you haven't yet) and copy the installation code. It looks like this:

<script src="https://nexoply.com/widget.js" data-chatbot="YOUR-KEY" async></script>

YOUR-KEY is replaced by your chatbot's own key, which the Chatbot page fills in for you. The key is public: it isn't a password and gives no access to your account. It only tells the widget which business it belongs to. Want to see the assistant first? Click Open a test page with your chatbot to try it on a sample page.

WPCode is a free plugin that adds code to your site's header or footer without touching theme files, so your code survives theme updates and theme changes.

1. 1

   Install WPCode

   In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New, search for "WPCode", then click Install Now and Activate.

2. 2

   Open Header & Footer

   In the left menu, go to Code Snippets → Header & Footer. You'll see three boxes: Header, Body and Footer.

3. 3

   Paste into Footer

   Paste your Nexoply code into the Footer box. It then loads just before the closing </body> tag on every page.

4. 4

   Save

   Click Save Changes. That's it: no need to republish anything.

If you prefer not to add a plugin, you can put the code directly in your theme. Use a child theme if you can: edits to a parent theme's files are overwritten when the theme updates.

1. 1

   Open the theme file editor

   Go to Appearance → Theme File Editor (on some sites it's under Tools → Theme File Editor) and select your child theme.

2. 2

   Find footer.php

   Open footer.php from the file list. If your child theme doesn't have one, copy the parent theme's footer.php into the child theme first.

3. 3

   Paste before </body>

   Paste the code on its own line just above the closing </body> tag. Leave the wp_footer() call in place.

4. 4

   Update the file

   Click Update File, then open your site to check.

Open your website in a new private window. A chat button appears in the bottom corner. Ask a real question, such as "Do you work on weekends?" or "How much is a boiler service?". Within seconds the conversation shows up under Conversations in your dashboard. From then on, any change you make in the dashboard reaches your website within about a minute, without touching WordPress again.

• Caching. Plugins such as WP Rocket, LiteSpeed Cache or W3 Total Cache (and some hosts) serve an old copy of your pages. Clear the plugin's cache and any host or CDN cache, then reload. If a "delay JavaScript" option is on, the button may only appear after the visitor scrolls or clicks; you can exclude nexoply.com/widget.js from that option.
• Wrong box. Make sure the code is in WPCode's Footer box (or before </body> in footer.php), pasted once and complete, including the closing </script>.
• WordPress.com plan. If you can't find Plugins or WPCode at all, your plan probably doesn't allow plugins.
• Allowed domains. If you set Only allow on these websites on the Chatbot page, check that your domain is listed exactly (for example mybusiness.com, or *.mybusiness.com for subdomains).
• Chatbot switched off. Check that the Chatbot enabled switch is on.
• Ad blockers. Rarely, a browser extension blocks chat widgets. Try another browser or a private window without extensions.

Everything else happens in the dashboard, not in WordPress. Under Chatbot → Customize you can choose the message button's icon (or your own image), text label, shape, size, colours and position, or use a side tab on the edge of the screen (such as "Help") instead. You can set a different look on phones, and use page rules to change it on chosen pages (for example /services/*). Style the chat window with your fonts, colours and logo, start from a ready-made template, and add start-screen buttons like Book, Call or WhatsApp.

Then check your conversations every week or so: questions the assistant couldn't answer are listed, and you can turn each one into an FAQ in one click. See how it works for the full picture, or compare plans on the pricing page when you need more conversations.