Use this guide to move from a downloaded ZIP to a grounded, customer-facing Assistant without exposing an unfinished configuration to visitors.

Before you begin

You need WordPress 6.0 or newer, PHP 7.4 or newer and an administrator account. WooCommerce is optional: without it, Assistant can answer from WordPress content, but product search, recommendations, cart, checkout, order status, size advice and stock alerts are unavailable. Elementor is optional and only needed for the three Elementor widgets.

Prepare the Assistant ZIP, the matching Assistant licence key from My Account → My Products, and at least one customer-owned AI-provider API key. A NextlerAI licence key and an AI API key are different credentials and cannot replace each other.

Make a current file-and-database backup before installing or replacing the plugin.

1. Install the correct ZIP

1. In WordPress, open Plugins → Add New Plugin → Upload Plugin.
2. Select the downloaded Assistant ZIP without extracting it.
3. Choose Install Now, then Activate Plugin.
4. Open Plugins and confirm that the installed product is NextlerAI Assistant 1.30.4.
5. Confirm that the WordPress menu now contains NAI Assistant with Dashboard, Settings, Languages & Localization, Back in stock, Technical diagnostics and License.

If WordPress says that the destination folder already exists, use WordPress’s replace-current upload flow when offered. Do not delete the old plugin directory before confirming that the database and wp-content backup are recoverable. Deactivation does not remove Assistant data; deletion removes it unless Settings → Advanced → Keep NextlerAI Assistant’s data when the plugin is deleted was enabled first.

2. Activate the licence

1. Open NAI Assistant → License.
2. Paste the key from the Assistant card in nextlerai.com → My Account → My Products. A Publisher key will not activate Assistant.
3. Select the real environment: Production, Staging or Development.
4. Choose Activate license, then Refresh status.

The status should be Active, Runtime access should be Enabled, and the activated domain should match the current site. Assistant verifies the licence approximately every 12 hours. A previously valid site may temporarily use a signed grace state during an eligible server failure, but an invalid key, wrong product, domain mismatch, disallowed environment or activation-limit response blocks runtime access immediately.

Without runtime access, the public assistant is hidden and Assistant administration becomes read-only. Stored settings, indexes and conversations remain intact.

3. Connect chat and embedding providers

Open NAI Assistant → Settings → General.

Assistant separates two jobs:

• The Chat provider writes grounded answers and can analyse images when its selected model supports vision.
• The Embedding provider builds and searches the product and knowledge indexes.

Google Gemini and OpenAI support chat, embeddings and vision. Anthropic Claude and xAI Grok support chat and vision but do not provide embeddings in this plugin, so they must be paired with Gemini or OpenAI for retrieval.

For a conservative first launch:

1. Select one chat provider and one embedding provider.
2. Enter only the provider keys you use. Save the settings before relying on the test result.
3. Select a chat model and an embedding model available to your provider account.
4. Keep Routing mode on One fixed model for the first test. Enable Smart or Hybrid routing only after every approved provider and role has been tested.
5. Use each provider’s Test button.

Leaving a saved secret field blank preserves the existing encrypted key. Changing the embedding provider or model makes the existing vector index incompatible and requires a rebuild.

4. Build the product index

If WooCommerce is active, open NAI Assistant → Dashboard and choose Reindex all. The background job embeds changed catalogue content and shows indexed, pending and total product counts.

Keep the dashboard open until the progress state finishes, or return later and confirm that Products indexed reports All synced. Product saves, variation updates, stock changes and deletions update the index automatically, but a provider/model change requires a complete rebuild.

Test one exact product name, one category request and one natural-language request in Settings → Advanced → Search test. A search that works only by exact name is not enough to prove semantic discovery.

5. Build trusted site knowledge

Open Settings → Knowledge Base and select only published, current sources that Assistant is allowed to quote. Include relevant pages, guides, policies and public content types; exclude drafts, internal notes, obsolete campaigns and duplicated translations.

Use Custom Q&A for short facts that have no authoritative page. Use Page & service training when a customer phrase should prefer a specific real page, service, package or guide. Training is a routing preference, not a substitute for correcting an inaccurate source page.

Run the Knowledge Base rebuild and verify the source/chunk counts in Knowledge overview & diagnostics. Enter real customer questions, choose the language and run a diagnostic. The strongest result should be the page that actually supports the answer.

6. Configure safe behaviour

Review every Settings tab before launch:

• General: provider, models, routing, public floating-widget switch and owner instructions.
• Appearance: accent and bubble colours, icon, movement mode and greeting preview.
• Products & Cart: product scope, result limits, comparison fields, alternatives, zero-price behaviour, complementary products, checkout, stock alerts and size advice.
• Knowledge Base: source scope, citations, strictness and Custom Q&A.
• Contact & Leads: public business facts, contact form, recipient and sender settings.
• Logs / Analytics: analytics, demand retention, response caching and estimated provider pricing.
• Embed: dimensions, side and offsets, reusable profiles and optional external origin allowlist.
• Advanced: rate limits, retrieval threshold, clarification, exit intent, re-engagement and uninstall retention.

Save once after reviewing all tabs; the single Save action submits every tab.

7. Complete a private-session acceptance test

Keep the public floating widget disabled until the controlled test is ready. Use a staging site, an inline embed on a private page or a short maintenance window.

Test at least:

1. A policy question that must cite the correct page.
2. An unknown fact that must not be invented.
3. An exact product, a broad need and an unavailable variation.
4. A two-product comparison using current price, stock, SKU and attributes.
5. A cart add, quantity change and removal.
6. Checkout state and the secure payment hand-off if in-chat checkout is enabled.
7. A visual search if a vision-capable provider is configured.
8. A contact-form delivery and sender/reply path.
9. Desktop, keyboard and 320–430 px mobile behaviour.
10. A second language in a fresh browser session.

Inspect Technical diagnostics, Dashboard top searches and Logs / Analytics after the test. Correct the source or catalogue data first; lower thresholds only when the evidence shows that ranking—not missing or conflicting data—is the problem.

Launch checklist

• Licence is Active for the correct product, domain and environment.
• Provider tests pass and provider-side billing/model access is enabled.
• Product and Knowledge Base indexes use the currently selected embedding model.
• No draft, private or obsolete source was indexed.
• Contact email delivery works.
• Cart and checkout actions match the store configuration.
• Widget placement does not cover cookie, accessibility, support or checkout controls.
• Logs, retention and privacy text match the site’s policy.
• One deliberate unsupported request produces a safe refusal or clarification.

Enable Settings → General → Show a floating chat bubble on the storefront only after these checks pass.

Common first-launch failures

• Assistant is missing from the storefront: verify Runtime access, Floating widget, cache layers and theme/footer rendering.
• Claude or Grok chat works but search does not: configure Gemini or OpenAI as the embedding provider and rebuild both indexes.
• Products are stale: confirm the index signature and run Reindex all.
• Policies are wrong: correct the published source, rebuild the Knowledge Base and clear the response cache.
• External embed loads but cart actions fail: this is expected; cross-site embeds intentionally block cart, checkout, order lookup and stock-notification actions.
• Normal visitors receive rate-limit errors: review the separate chat-message and background-action limits; do not disable protection globally.

Related guides

AI providers and Smart Routing · Product indexing and search · Knowledge Base and training · Placement and embeds · Security and privacy