AI Bot for bbPress

AI Bot for bbPress integrates seamlessly with your bbPress forums, allowing a configurable AI bot user to participate in discussions. The bot can be triggered by direct mentions (@YourBotUsername) or specific keywords within forum posts, leveraging context from the forum and optionally a remote WordPress site.

Currently uses OpenAI’s ChatGPT API. Future versions will migrate to our AI HTTP Client library to provide multi-provider support (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Grok, OpenRouter) with a unified interface.

Links:

* Plugin Homepage – Visit the developer’s website

* GitHub Repository – Source code, issues, and contributions

* Support – Report bugs or request features

Configuration

After activation, navigate to Settings > Forum AI Bot in your WordPress admin area to configure the following options:

• OpenAI API Key: Your secret API key from OpenAI.

• Bot User ID: The WordPress user ID of the account the bot will use to post replies.

• System Prompt: Instructions defining the bot’s personality, role, and general behavior (e.g., “You are a helpful assistant for the Example Community forum.”).

• Custom Prompt: Additional instructions appended to every API request, useful for guiding specific response formats or context usage.

• Temperature: Controls the creativity/randomness of the AI’s responses (0 = deterministic, 1 = max creativity). Default is 0.5.

• Trigger Keywords: A comma-separated list of keywords (in addition to mentions) that will trigger the bot to respond.

• Local Search Limit: Maximum number of relevant posts/topics to retrieve from the local forum database for context. Default is 3.

• Remote REST Endpoint URL: The full URL to the search endpoint provided by the BBP Bot Helper plugin installed on your remote site (e.g., https://your-main-site.com/wp-json/bbp-bot-helper/v1/search ). Leave blank to disable remote context.

• Remote Search Limit: Maximum number of relevant posts to retrieve from the remote endpoint for context. Default is 3.

• Forum Access Control: Choose whether the bot responds in all forums or only selected ones. When set to “Selected Forums Only”, you can choose specific forums where the bot will be active.

External Services

This plugin connects to the OpenAI API to generate responses for the AI bot. This is essential for the plugin’s core functionality of providing AI-driven replies in bbPress forums.

• Service: OpenAI API (specifically the Chat Completions endpoint).

• Purpose: To generate intelligent and contextually relevant responses based on forum discussions and configured prompts.

• Data Sent: When the bot is triggered (by a mention or keyword), the following types of data are sent to the OpenAI API:

• The content of the post that triggered the bot.

• Relevant conversation history from the current topic (including post content and author usernames/slugs).

• Contextual information retrieved from the local WordPress database (titles, snippets, and URLs of relevant posts/pages based on keyword matching).

• If configured, contextual information retrieved from a remote WordPress site via the BBP Bot Helper plugin (titles, snippets, and URLs of relevant posts/pages).

• The system prompt, custom prompt, and temperature settings configured in the plugin’s admin page.

• The structure of your bbPress forums (forum names, topic names, and their hierarchy).

• The current date and time.

• When Data is Sent: Data is sent only when the bot is triggered to generate a response. This occurs after a user posts a new reply or topic that meets the trigger conditions (mentioning the bot or containing a specified keyword).

• OpenAI API Terms of Service: https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-service

• OpenAI API Privacy Policy: https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy

It is important to have an active OpenAI API key with sufficient credits for the bot to function. Please review OpenAI’s policies to understand how they handle the data sent to their API.

If the “Remote REST Endpoint URL” is configured, the plugin will also send search queries (derived from the conversation) to that endpoint to fetch additional context. This endpoint is typically on another WordPress site you control and that runs the companion “BBP Bot Helper” plugin. No user-specific data is sent to this remote endpoint beyond the search terms.

The data received from this endpoint is then included in the information sent to the OpenAI API as described above.