About this plugin
Unlike a generic chatbot, this plugin builds its knowledge base directly from
your own WordPress pages/posts, and is instructed to answer only from that
content. If a visitor asks something outside it, the bot says so plainly and
points them to a contact you configure, instead of guessing.
Everything runs inside your own WordPress install. The plugin calls the
Anthropic API directly from your server using an API key you provide
(bring-your-own-key). No account, license key or payment is needed, and every
feature of the plugin is available to everyone.
Separately, 118 West sells an optional “Bot118 Pro” add-on plugin (managed AI so you
need no Anthropic account, lead capture, sales mode, your own bot image, your own welcome greeting and footer) at
com/wordpress-plug-in-shop/. This plugin works fully without it.
The knowledge base rebuilds itself automatically after you publish or update
indexed content, and the plugin actively watches for an expired or revoked
Anthropic key so a broken key produces a clear warning in wp-admin instead of a
silently broken widget.
External services
This plugin connects to one external service. Please review its terms before use.
- Anthropic (Claude API) – every
com, along with a short excerpt of
your own site content and your Anthropic API key, to generate an answer. No
other visitor data is sent. Anthropic Privacy Policy:
com/privacy – Terms:
com/legal/commercial-terms
The plugin shows no credit link by default. In Settings you may optionally turn
on a small “Bot118 by 118 West” banner under the chat window.
Keeping content current
By default, the knowledge base rebuilds itself automatically about 30
seconds after you publish or update any indexed content, and once a day as
a safety net (this relies on WordPress’s own scheduler, which needs site
visits to fire – very low-traffic sites may see a short delay). You can turn
this off and rebuild manually instead from Settings > Bot118 Chatbot.
Notes on this version
- Retrieval is simple keyword matching, not semantic embeddings. It works
well for direct FAQ-style questions but can miss heavily paraphrased ones.
- The chat endpoint is public (any site visitor can use it). To limit bots and
runaway usage it requires a short-lived signed token the bundled widget fetches
when the chat is opened, checks the request’s origin, rate-limits per visitor,
caps messages per conversation, ignores repeated identical questions and
enforces a configurable daily limit. A determined attacker rotating IP
addresses can still send some requests; the daily limit bounds the cost.
- For a multi-site/multi-club rollout, each site gets its own install and
its own settings – this version does not share a knowledge base across sites.