Settings - Plugixa Chat

Plugixa Chat -> Configuration -> Settings holds the options that apply to the whole site. Options that belong to one widget are in the builder.

The screen has seven tabs, listed down the side on a wide screen and across the top on a narrow one.

Tab	What it holds
Delivery	How the widget reaches your pages
Privacy	What is kept about visitors, and for how long
Formatting	How dates, times and lists are shown
Leads	Email notifications and Turnstile
Analytics	Events for Google and Meta tags
Buttons	The shortcode builder
WooCommerce	The product page button

Every setting on this screen is in the free edition.

Saving

• Delivery, Privacy and Formatting are saved together with the Save button at the top right of the screen.
• Leads, Analytics and WooCommerce each have their own Save button at the bottom of the tab.
• Buttons saves nothing.

The screen needs the permission to manage the plugin’s settings. Administrators have it. Anyone else sees “You do not have permission to change these settings.”

Delivery

“How the widget reaches your pages, and what happens when a check cannot be made.”

Setting	Default	What it does
Draw the button before scripts load	On	“Recommended. The button appears with the rest of the page instead of jumping into place afterwards.” While off, the launcher is drawn by the script once it has loaded
Isolate the widget from your theme	On	“Recommended. Stops your theme’s styles changing how the widget looks. Turn it off only if you need to restyle the widget with your own CSS.”
If a visitor check fails	Show the widget, except for location and audience rules	See below

If a visitor check fails

Some rules are decided in the visitor’s browser: Signed in, Came from, and the Pro rules Business hours, Country and Language. For these the widget asks your site one short question. “Sometimes the widget cannot confirm who is reading the page - an ad blocker, an offline visitor, a slow network.” The request is given three seconds.

Choice	When a check cannot be made
Show the widget, except for location and audience rules	A rule that could not be checked is treated as matching, so a Show on rule still shows the widget. The exception is Country and Language rules, which are treated as not matching. This is the default
Keep the widget hidden	Every rule that could not be checked is treated as not matching, so a Show on rule hides the widget

“Location, language and audience rules always hide the widget when they cannot be confirmed, because showing it to the wrong person is the costlier mistake.”

The setting has no effect on a widget with no such rules, on rules about the page, or on Device rules, none of which need the request.

Developers can change the answer for one kind of rule with the plugixa_chat_unevaluable_rule filter. See Hooks reference.

Privacy

“What is kept about the people who contact you, and for how long.”

Setting	Default	What it does
Visitor IP addresses	Store a one-way hash (recommended)	What is kept with each lead. See below
Delete leads and closed conversations after	0	“Days. Set to 0 to keep them indefinitely.” Accepts 0 to 3650

Visitor IP addresses

Choice	What is stored with a lead
Store a one-way hash (recommended)	A salted hash of the address. It cannot be turned back into the address
Store a shortened address	The address with its last part removed: the last number of an IPv4 address, or the last 80 bits of an IPv6 address
Store nothing	Nothing
Store the full address	The address as it is

“Hashing still lets the plugin block abuse, without keeping anything that identifies a person. Only choose the full address if you are required to keep it.”

The choice applies to leads stored from then on. It does not change leads already stored. Whatever is chosen, the stored value is never shown on any screen and is not part of the CSV export.

The limits that stop a visitor flooding the form or the analytics work the same with every choice, including Store nothing.

Retention

With a number of days set, once a day the plugin permanently deletes:

• leads older than that, including ones already deleted from the list,
• analytics figures older than that.

With 0, nothing is deleted automatically.

Formatting

“How dates, times and lists are shown on these screens.”

Setting	Default	Choices
Date format	Y-m-d	Y-m-d, d/m/Y, m/d/Y, d.m.Y, d-m-Y, j M Y, M j, Y
Time format	H:i	H:i, g:i a, g:i A
Rows per page	50	10 to 200

The formats use PHP’s date letters: Y is the four-digit year, m the month, d the day, j the day without a leading zero, M the short month name, H:i the 24-hour time, and g:i a the 12-hour time with am or pm.

Dates are shown in the timezone set under WordPress Settings -> General. The plugin has no timezone setting of its own.

These settings affect the admin screens and the CSV export only. They change nothing visitors see.

Leads

“Who is told about a new message, and how spam is kept out.”

Email notifications

Setting	Default	What it does
Email me when a new lead arrives	On	Sends an email for every stored message
Send to	Empty	“One or more addresses, separated by commas. Leave empty to use the site admin email.” Up to 10 addresses. Anything that is not a valid address is dropped when you save

Spam protection with Cloudflare Turnstile

A label beside the heading shows On or Off.

“Every form already blocks most spam with a hidden trap field, a minimum typing time and a limit of five messages per visitor every five minutes. Add Turnstile if spam still gets through.”

Setting	What it is
Site key	The public key from your Cloudflare Turnstile widget
Secret key	The private key. “Stored separately from your other settings and never shown again.” Once one is saved the field reads “A secret key is saved. Enter a new one to replace it.”

Turnstile is on when both keys are saved. Turn off Turnstile removes both. Get your keys opens the Turnstile page of your Cloudflare account.

See Contact form for what visitors see and what is sent to Cloudflare.

Analytics

“Hand widget events to the analytics tags already on your site.”

Setting	Default	What it does
Send widget events to Google Analytics, Tag Manager and Meta Pixel	On	“Uses the tags already installed on your site. Plugixa Chat loads no tracking script and sends nothing to Google or Meta itself, so a site without these tags is not affected.”

The tab also lists the Event names. See Tracking events.

Buttons

A shortcode builder for chat buttons inside your content. Nothing on this tab is saved. See Shortcodes.

WooCommerce

“A contact button on your product pages.”

Setting	Default
Show a contact button below Add to cart on product pages	Off
Widget	None
Channel	None
Button text	Empty, which uses “Ask about this product”
Pre-filled message	Empty, which uses “Hi! I have a question about {product}: {url}”

See WooCommerce product button.

Settings that are elsewhere

Looking for	It is here
A widget’s colour, size, position, greeting	Builder: Design
Where and when a widget appears	Builder: When and where
The contact form’s fields and wording	Contact form
How several agents share visitors PRO	The Agents screen
Webhooks and CRM connections PRO	Their own screens under Configuration

Settings and page caches

Changing a setting that affects the front of your site rebuilds the data the widget reads. If you use a full-page cache, clear it after changing Delivery settings, Turnstile keys or the WooCommerce button, so cached pages pick up the change.

How settings are stored

All settings are kept in one WordPress option, plugixa_chat_settings. The Turnstile secret key is kept apart, in plugixa_chat_secrets, and is never sent to a browser. See Privacy and uninstall.

What to do next

• Understand what is stored in Privacy and uninstall.
• Fix a setting that is not taking effect with Troubleshooting.