Olark Chat is a very popular, clean, easy to use live chat solution that can be customised to fit with your website.
You can see who is on your site, what they’re looking at and where they’ve been. Wouldn’t it be even better if you could pull more data back from your WordPress install (data only available if the user is logged in)? Data such as yes they are logged in, their name, email address any other data you wish that is stored against that user for example if you have WooCommerce then the billing address or company name could be sent back to the chat operator screen as soon as the chat starts.
Just don’t freak you visitor out by saying ‘hello Dave’ when they start a chat!
First you need your ‘Site ID’ from https://www.olark.com/settings/code and edit the code
$olarkcode = "1111-333-22-4444"; where 1111-333-22-4444 is your site ID.
Add the following code you your functions file:
functions.php
function add_olarkchat() {
$olarkcode = "1111-333-22-4444";
?>
<!-- begin olark code -->
<script data-cfasync="false" type='text/javascript'>/*<![CDATA[*/window.olark||(function(c){var f=window,d=document,l=f.location.protocol=="https:"?"https:":"http:",z=c.name,r="load";var nt=function(){
f[z]=function(){
(a.s=a.s||[]).push(arguments)};var a=f[z]._={
},q=c.methods.length;while(q--){(function(n){f[z][n]=function(){
f[z]("call",n,arguments)}})(c.methods[q])}a.l=c.loader;a.i=nt;a.p={
0:+new Date};a.P=function(u){
a.p[u]=new Date-a.p[0]};function s(){
a.P(r);f[z](r)}f.addEventListener?f.addEventListener(r,s,false):f.attachEvent("on"+r,s);var ld=function(){function p(hd){
hd="head";return["<",hd,"></",hd,"><",i,' onl' + 'oad="var d=',g,";d.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].",j,"(d.",h,"('script')).",k,"='",l,"//",a.l,"'",'"',"></",i,">"].join("")}var i="body",m=d[i];if(!m){
return setTimeout(ld,100)}a.P(1);var j="appendChild",h="createElement",k="src",n=d[h]("div"),v=n[j](d[h](z)),b=d[h]("iframe"),g="document",e="domain",o;n.style.display="none";m.insertBefore(n,m.firstChild).id=z;b.frameBorder="0";b.id=z+"-loader";if(/MSIE[ ]+6/.test(navigator.userAgent)){
b.src="javascript:false"}b.allowTransparency="true";v[j](b);try{
b.contentWindow[g].open()}catch(w){
c[e]=d[e];o="javascript:var d="+g+".open();d.domain='"+d.domain+"';";b[k]=o+"void(0);"}try{
var t=b.contentWindow[g];t.write(p());t.close()}catch(x){
b[k]=o+'d.write("'+p().replace(/"/g,String.fromCharCode(92)+'"')+'");d.close();'}a.P(2)};ld()};nt()})({
loader: "static.olark.com/jsclient/loader0.js",name:"olark",methods:["configure","extend","declare","identify"]});
/* custom configuration goes here (www.olark.com/documentation) */
olark.identify(<?php echo "'".$olarkcode."'"; ?>);/*]]>*/</script><noscript><a href="https://www.olark.com/site/<?php echo $olarkcode; ?>/contact" title="Contact us" target="_blank">Questions? Feedback?</a> powered by <a href="http://www.olark.com?welcome" title="Olark live chat software">Olark live chat software</a></noscript>
<!-- end olark code -->
<?php
echo '<script type="text/javascript">';
echo "olark('api.chat.onBeginConversation', function(){";
if ( is_user_logged_in() ) {
$curruser = wp_get_current_user();
echo "olark('api.visitor.updateEmailAddress', {emailAddress: '". $curruser->user_email ."'});";
echo "olark('api.visitor.updateFullName', {fullName: '". $curruser->user_firstname ." ". $curruser->user_lastname ."'});";
echo "olark('api.chat.sendNotificationToOperator', {body: '** Logged in: YES ** '});";
}else{
echo "olark('api.chat.sendNotificationToOperator', {body: '** Logged in: NO ** '});";
}
echo "});";
echo '</script>';
}
add_action('wp_footer', 'add_olarkchat', 10, 1);
Further enhancements can be made such as if you are using WooCommerce then the phone number could be populated:
functions.php
echo "olark('api.visitor.updatePhoneNumber', {phoneNumber: '". $curruser->billing_phone. "'});";
echo "olark('api.chat.sendNotificationToOperator', {body: '** Company name: " .$curruser->billing_company ." ** '});";
This is fantastic Dean. Thank you so much. It’s exactly what I’ve been searching for this week while testing out Olark on my membership site (Woocommerce and Pmpro). In fact, I wrote a super long blog post yesterday about my search for the perfect live chat wp plugin 🙂
Thanks again!
Loralee
Hi Loralee, I’m happy it has helped you out.
I must agree with your post re Co-Browsing being your favorite feature however I does freak some users out (just a bit).