Installing Beckonbird Chat Button — the free WordPress contact button

The free plugin is not in the WordPress.org directory yet. Every plugin in the directory is reviewed by a person, a plugin has to be complete when it is submitted, and a name cannot be reserved in advance. This page will link straight to the listing the moment it is live. Nothing on this site will offer you a plugin ZIP from somewhere else in the meantime: for a WordPress plugin, “download this file from a website you found” is exactly the habit that gets sites compromised.

1 · Install it

In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New, search for Beckonbird Chat Button, then press Install and Activate. It needs WordPress 6.3 and PHP 7.4. On anything older it does not start, says so in a notice to the people who can fix it, and leaves the rest of your site alone.

2 · Fill in your channels

Open Beckonbird → Settings. The Buttons tab has one row for each of the eight channels: WhatsApp, Phone, SMS, Telegram, Viber, Messenger, Email and Link. Fill in the ones you answer on and leave the rest empty. Start a number with the country code, for example +45; a number written the national way with a 0 in front is refused, with the reason. A WhatsApp, Telegram or Messenger link you copied can be pasted as it is.

A message or an email subject can contain {title}, {url} and {site}, which are filled in with the page the visitor is on. Shows on decides, per channel, whether it appears on all devices, on phones only or on computers only. Phone and SMS start as phones only.

3 · Choose how it looks

The Appearance tab sets the side of the screen, the distance from the edge, the size, the colour (the icon turns black or white by itself, whichever reads better), the words beside the button, a gentle pulse that visitors who prefer less motion never see, and the layer. The default layer, 9990, sits above most themes and below cookie banners.

4 · Choose where it shows

The Display tab shows the button on the whole site, only on the pages you list, or everywhere except the pages you list. You list pages by their number, which is in the address bar when you edit one: post=123. The same tab has the Google Analytics option, which is off until you turn it on.

5 · One link inside a page

For a single link in a post or page, the shortcode [beckonbird channel="whatsapp" text="Chat with us" value="+45 12 34 56 78" message="Hi about {title}"] draws one. value and message are optional: left out, the saved channel’s own are used. The same rules clean what you write, and a shortcode that cannot work says so to people who can edit the page, and draws nothing for everyone else.

Wondering how a number you have will come out? The link builder shows the exact address the plugin makes.

Then, if you have a team