AI Chatbot Free Models – Customer Support, Live Chat, Virtual Assistant

Important Notice for Users Updating to Version 1.6.6+ The latest update improves the plugin's file structure for better performance. As a result, the default paths for some images (like the chatbot icon and avatars) have changed. If you notice that the chatbot button or avatars are not appearing after the update, it is almost certainly due to your browser or website's cache. Solution: Please perform a "hard refresh" in your browser (Ctrl+F5 on Windows/Linux, Cmd+Shift+R on Mac). If you use a caching plugin (like WP Rocket, LiteSpeed, WP Fastest Cache etc.), please purge all caches from your plugin's settings. This will solve the issue. AI Chatbot Free Models empowers you to integrate a cutting-edge AI chatbot into your WordPress website! Unlock the potential of over 400 AI models through OpenRouter.ai, including industry-leading options like ChatGPT, Claude, Grok 4 and Google Gemini 2.5 Pro, as well as powerful open-source alternatives such as Llama, Mistral, and DeepSeek! Choose from a wide array of both free and premium models to perfectly match your needs and budget. Unlike many other plugins, all management and customization happen entirely within your WordPress backend, no need to visit external sites for configuration. The only account required is to obtain your free API key. Looking for a platform-independent version?\ This chatbot is also available as a standalone version for use in non-WordPress websites (HTML, PHP, etc.).\ Get it on GitHub Use Cases Here are several practical ways to use Chatbot AI Free Models on your WordPress website:

• 24/7 Customer Support\ Provide instant answers to visitors at any time, improving engagement and reducing support workload.
• Lead Generation Assistant\ Qualify visitors and collect contact information through conversational interaction.
• Product Recommendation Bot\ Help users find suitable products or services using natural language queries.
• Content Navigation Helper\ Guide users to the right blog posts, categories, or pages based on their questions.
• Automated Live Chat for Immediate Engagement Deploy an automated assistant that mimics a live chat operator. It can greet visitors, answer initial questions, and guide them, ensuring every user feels supported.
• Knowledge Base Access\ Offer a conversational interface to your FAQ, help articles, or documentation.
• Idea Generation for Writers and Bloggers\ Suggest article topics, headlines, or summaries directly within your website.
• Multilingual Support\ Serve users in multiple languages by selecting models with multilingual capabilities.
• Chatbot-Powered Helpdesk Turn your chatbot into a powerful first-line helpdesk. It provides instant, automated support 24/7 and captures visitor details with an optional pre-chat form.
• Free AI Integration\ Use free models from OpenRouter without additional costs or complex setup.

1.6.7

• Enhancement: The conversation history is now managed via sessionStorage, making it more robust and independent from PHP sessions.
• Enhancement: Session storage keys are now unique to each site, preventing chat history from being shared across different sites on the same domain (e.g., in a local development environment).
• Enhancement: Improved CSS for chat bubbles to ensure consistent height and layout across different browsers and themes.
• Fix: Corrected a critical caching issue that prevented styles and scripts from loading for non-logged-in users on sites with aggressive server-side caching.
• Fix: Resolved a bug where the first message of a new conversation would not appear in the admin panel until a second message was sent.
• Fix: Corrected all remaining incorrect asset paths (images, sounds) following the code refactoring.
• Fix: The chatbot widget button and proactive message no longer appear when the shortcode display mode is active.

1.6.6

• Security Fix: Hardened the CSV export function to prevent formula injection. All fields are now sanitized to neutralize potentially malicious input. Props to Wordfence for the responsible disclosure.
• Dev: Complete code refactoring for better performance, maintainability, and scalability. The plugin is now fully object-oriented and follows modern WordPress standards.
• Enhancement: The CSS for the embedded shortcode view has been completely redesigned for a more professional and integrated look.
• Fix: The chatbot widget button no longer appears incorrectly when the shortcode display mode is selected.
• Fix: Resolved a critical bug that prevented new conversations from being displayed in the admin panel after updating from a previous version.
• Fix: The unread message notification counter is now correctly cleared upon plugin uninstallation.
• Fix: Corrected all asset paths (CSS, JS, images) to work with the new modular file structure.
• Tweak: Separated frontend and backend CSS files to ensure only necessary styles are loaded.

1.6.4

• New: Unread conversation notifications! A red badge will now appear on the 'Chatbot' admin menu item, showing the count of unread conversations.
• New: Conversation IDs are now clean and sequential (e.g., Chat_1, Chat_2) instead of the long, timestamp-based string.
• Enhancement: The admin message list has been improved. Unread conversations are now highlighted in bold for easy identification.
• Enhancement: Added a descriptive tooltip to the admin menu badge, showing the exact number of unread conversations on hover.
• Dev: Major refactor of the database schema. A new conversations table has been introduced to manage conversations more robustly and enable sequential IDs.

1.6.3

• New: Added a "Display Mode" option to show the chatbot either as a floating widget or embedded directly into a page/post using the [newcodebyte_chatbot] shortcode.
• Tweak: The CSS has been hardened to prevent layout issues caused by aggressive themes or other plugins.

1.6.2

• Feature: The chatbot's position can now be set to the bottom-left or bottom-right corner via the Style settings, improving compatibility with themes and other widgets.
• Feature: The API Key field now masks the input (shows dots) and includes a toggle button to show/hide the key for better security and usability.
• Tweak: The API Key input field now dynamically resizes to fit the entire key, preventing it from being cut off.
• Tweak: The admin conversation view has been restyled for better readability, with full-width message bands and improved spacing.
• Fix: Resolved a major stability issue where conversations would fail to save on certain hosting environments (like AlterVista) due to session handling conflicts.
• Fix: Corrected a CSS conflict that prevented the chat button from moving to the selected position on both desktop and mobile views.
• Fix: Addressed a layout bug on mobile devices where the chat window would be partially cut off.
• Fix: Resolved a JavaScript error that displayed an [object Object] alert after deleting messages.

1.6.1

• Tweak: The proactive message bubble now automatically resizes to fit the text content, improving its appearance.
• Tweak: The text formatting (line breaks) in the proactive message is now correctly displayed.
• Fix: Corrected a CSS issue that could cause the chat button to appear distorted or deformed on some themes after the recent update.
• Added a new "NewCodeByte Plugins" tab to display a list of other plugins by NewCodeByte.

1.6

• New Feature: Added an optional Pre-Chat Form to collect user's name and email before the conversation starts. This can be enabled in the "Settings" tab.
• New Feature: Added a proactive welcome message bubble that appears next to the chat button to encourage user engagement. The text and appearance delay can be customized in the "Settings" tab.
• Major Improvement: The "Messages" tab in the admin panel has been completely redesigned. Messages are now grouped by conversation for a much clearer and more professional overview.
• Improvement: The conversation view in the admin panel now displays the user's provided name or email instead of the generic "User" label, making it easier to identify conversations.
• Improvement: The conversation view in the admin panel now uses the same custom colors chosen for the frontend chat, ensuring a consistent design experience.
• Improvement: The database schema has been updated to store conversation data more efficiently, including a unique conversation ID and user details. An automatic update script ensures a seamless transition for existing users.
• Improvement: The conversation export feature has been updated to export data grouped by conversation, making the exported files (TXT, CSV, MD, HTML) significantly more useful and organized.
• Tweak: The file naming convention for exported conversations is now simpler and more user-friendly (e.g., conversations_YYYY-MM-DD.txt).
• Tweak: Added a cursor: pointer to the conversation list in the admin panel to improve usability and indicate that a conversation is clickable.
• Tweak: Added an option to customize the height of the chat window in the "Style" tab.
• Fix: Ensured the uninstall process is complete, removing all plugin options and data from the database for a clean removal.
• Under the Hood: Refactored the plugin's code to improve security, stability, and adherence to WordPress best practices.

1.5

• Upgraded: Introduced conversation history for a more intelligent and context-aware chatbot experience.

1.4

• Fixed: Fixed mobile chat window display Issues on different screen sizes.

1.3

• Fixed: Bug fix release: Various bugs and security fix.

1.2

• Fixed: Bug fix release: Security fix for message exporting.

1.1

• Fixed: Resolved an issue where checkbox settings for "Show Powered by NewCodeByte" and "Save Messages" could not be toggled off after being enabled.

1.0

• Initial release of Chatbot AI Free Models.
• Added basic chatbot functionality using OpenRouter.ai.
• Implemented settings page for configuration.
• Added options for customizing the chatbot's appearance.
• Added message and IP saving functionality.
• Added "Powered by NewCodeByte" attribution.