AumChat

AumChat is a hosted customer chat service. This plugin is the installer for it: it connects your site to an AumChat account, prints the widget on your pages, and — if you sell something — keeps the product list on AumChat current so the assistant can answer about it. That is all it does.

Everything a chat widget usually buries in a settings screen — how it looks, who it greets, what the automatic replies say, business hours, your team — lives in the AumChat workspace and applies to every site you connect, including ones that do not run WordPress. So this plugin has no settings screen to speak of: a Connect button, a status line, a box for a sync token, and the rules below for where the widget appears.

What the status line is for

AumChat only serves the widget on the domain saved for that site in your workspace. That check is what stops someone from copying your snippet onto another site and using your account.

It also means a site key that is correct but saved with the wrong domain shows nothing at all on your pages, with no error anywhere. That is a miserable thing to debug, so this plugin asks AumChat about your key when you connect and tells you plainly: connected and live, or “this key belongs to example.com but this site is shop.example.com”.

What you need

A free AumChat account at chat.aumcreate.com. The free plan includes one website, AI replies each month, and a product catalogue; plans and limits are listed at aumcreate.com/aumchat. There is no separate licence to enter here and nothing in this plugin is locked.

Letting the assistant answer about your products

When WooCommerce or AumNexCart is active, a Products card appears with a box for a sync token. Copy it from Products in your AumChat workspace; unlike the site key it is a secret, and until you paste it nothing about your products leaves your site.

With a token saved, “Sync products now” sends your published products, and the plugin repeats that once a day — so the assistant quotes today’s prices and stock instead of whatever it saw the day you connected. The card then reports what the last sync sent.

The first 2000 published products are synced, and translations made by AumLang are not counted as separate products. Exactly which fields are sent is listed under “External services” below.

Controlling where the widget appears

By default the widget is on every public page, and never in the admin, in feeds, or on AMP pages. The settings screen can narrow that down:

• every page, every page except a list you write, or only the pages on that list;
• hidden from signed-in users with roles you choose, which is how most people stop their own widget from following them around while they work;
• hidden on the WooCommerce cart and checkout, when WooCommerce is active.

These rules are decided inside WordPress. Nothing about them is sent anywhere; they only choose whether the loader script is printed on the page.

When a rule is not enough, one filter decides per request:

add_filter( 'aumchat_show_widget', function ( $show ) {
    return is_checkout() ? false : $show;
} );

Source code

The released source is on GitHub at https://github.com/aumcreate/aumchat-wp — bug reports and pull requests are welcome there.

External services

This plugin connects your site to AumChat, a chat service operated by AumCreate at https://chat.aumcreate.com. The plugin is useless without it, so connecting a site is what grants consent for the exchanges below.

1. The chat widget, in your visitors’ browsers.

Once a site is connected, every public page loads https://chat.aumcreate.com/loader.js and, when a visitor opens the chat, a frame from https://chat.aumcreate.com/. This happens in the visitor’s browser, not on your server. AumChat receives:

• the site key, and the address and title of the page the visitor is on;
• the address that referred them, their browser’s language and user agent;
• the country their connection comes from, as reported by the hosting provider (IP addresses are not stored);
• a random visitor identifier the widget stores in the browser’s local storage, so a conversation continues as the visitor moves between pages;
• anything the visitor types or attaches in the chat, and an email address if they choose to leave one.

Conversations are kept for the retention period the site owner sets in the workspace (12 months after a conversation closes by default, and they can be deleted sooner). Visitors who never open the chat still cause the loader script to be fetched.

2. A status check from your server, made in the admin.

When you press Connect, save a key by hand, or press “Check again”, this plugin calls https://chat.aumcreate.com/api/plugin/site. It sends the site key and this site’s domain, and nothing else. The answer is the site’s name, its saved domain, and when the widget was last seen. No visitor data is involved and this request never happens on a front-end page view.

3. Your product catalogue, if you turn on product sync.

Product sync is off until you paste a sync token from your AumChat dashboard. Once you do, this plugin sends your published products to https://chat.aumcreate.com/api/plugin/products — when you press “Sync products now”, and once a day from then on — so the assistant answers with current prices and stock instead of whatever it saw the day you connected. For each published product it sends the product’s post ID, name, price and currency, category, SKU, permalink, image address, short description, full description, specification list and stock status. Drafts, private and trashed products are not read. Nothing about your visitors, customers or orders is sent, and no order, customer or user record is read at any point. Remove the sync token and the daily job sends nothing; deactivate the plugin and the job is removed.

4. Connecting an account.

The Connect button sends you to https://chat.aumcreate.com/wp-connect with this site’s domain and the address of this settings page, so the workspace can send the site key back. You sign in on AumChat’s own pages; this plugin never sees your password.

Terms of Service: https://chat.aumcreate.com/legal#terms
Privacy Policy: https://chat.aumcreate.com/legal