AI Search for October CMS

Overview

An October site is built from pages, blog posts and content you wrote yourself, and visitors know what they want but not what you called it. They type "when are you open at the weekend" and your search finds nothing, because none of those words is in the title of your Opening hours page. The AI Search Bar answers what they mean, and finds it.

The plugin puts the bar on your site without any theme work. We read your pages ourselves, so there is no API key to create and nothing to paste.

Requirements

• October CMS 3.0 or later, or October CMS 4.0 or later.
• PHP 7.4 or later, with the curl extension, which every October install already needs.
• Your server has to be able to make outgoing HTTPS requests, because the plugin talks to us directly. Most hosts allow this.

Installing the Plugin

From the October CMS Marketplace, open Asyntai AI Search and add it to your project. Or, with Composer, from your project folder:

1. In the backend, open Settings, then Asyntai AI Search under Asyntai.
2. Press Connect Asyntai. A window opens where you sign in or create a free account.
3. Wait a few minutes while we read your site. The plugin screen tells you when the bar is live.

Choosing Where the Bar Appears

There is one setting, Where the bar goes, with two answers.

In place of my search box

The bar finds the search form your theme already renders, hides it, and takes exactly the same place. Nothing in your theme has to be edited. If a visitor presses Enter without picking a result, your usual search page still opens, so nothing they already know stops working.

An October site has exactly the search box its theme author wrote, and some themes, including the demo theme, have none. On a site like that this setting has nothing to replace, and the plugin screen says so. Put the bar in your theme instead.

Only where my theme puts it

Add the Asyntai AI Search Bar component to a page or a layout, in the CMS editor or by hand:

Or print the bar from any template with the Twig function:

Both print a container the bar renders into, and both print nothing at all while the bar is off, so your theme is left exactly as it was. Your own CSS styles the container, so the bar sits in the layout like anything else you put there.

The Other Settings

• Search box to replace. Leave it empty and we find the form ourselves. Fill in a CSS selector only if we pick the wrong one, for example header form[role=search].
• Placeholder text. Leave it empty and each visitor sees it in their own language.
• Accent colour. Leave it empty to use the colour set in your Asyntai dashboard.

Press Save on the plugin screen. The change is on your site at once, without clearing any cache.

Trying It Before Your Visitors Do

The plugin screen has a Try your search bar button. It opens your real search bar, on your real content, in a new tab. Searches you run there do not count against your monthly allowance.

Plans and Limits

A site connected through this plugin runs the bar on any plan, including the free one. Your monthly reply allowance still applies, and searches and chat replies share it. The plugin screen shows how much of the month is left.

When the allowance runs out, the bar removes itself and your own search box comes straight back. Your visitors keep being able to search. They are never left typing into a box that answers nothing.

The plugin checks this in the background, so the bar comes back by itself when your allowance resets. You do not have to update or reinstall anything.

What the Bar Searches

Your pages and posts, as we read them from your site. If you run a shop on October, its product pages are read the same way, because they are pages on your site.

Multiple Sites

The connection belongs to the October install, so every site it serves shares one Asyntai account and one search index. Connect from the backend once, and the bar is on all of them.

If Something Does Not Work

• No bar appears. Open the plugin screen and read the line under the coloured dot. It says exactly why the bar is off.
• It says your theme has no search box. Add the Asyntai AI Search Bar component to a layout, and set Where the bar goes to Only where my theme puts it.
• Could not reach Asyntai. Your server cannot make outgoing HTTPS requests. Ask your host to allow them.
• The bar replaced the wrong element. Fill in Search box to replace with a CSS selector for the right one.
• October signed you out during the connect step. Log in again and press Connect once more.

Disconnecting

Press Disconnect this site on the plugin screen. The bar stops at once and your usual search takes over. Removing the plugin removes everything it added, including its own database table.

Using the Chatbot as Well

This plugin adds the search bar only. To add the chat assistant too, install our separate October CMS chatbot plugin. The two work side by side on the same pages and share the same knowledge base.