Install & connect the plugin

Overview

The Allspice WordPress plugin puts the Allspice widget and cooking tools on your recipe pages. Once it's installed, it detects recipe pages, adds the widget and adaptive rail, loads asynchronously, and records reader activity for your analytics and revenue attribution.

Everything is configured on the plugin's settings page, Settings → Allspice, and in the Publisher Portal. The settings page covers:

• Connection - your Publisher ID, Domain ID, and Webhook Token (see Initial setup).
• Widget options - Widget Style per device (including the adaptive rail) and the Full-Page Widget. These are documented in Widget configuration.
• Synchronization - the three sync buttons.
• Pages - standalone pages (membership, search, and meal plans) that Allspice creates as drafts for you to review and publish.
• Status & Debug - sync status and errors, the debug link, and the front-end on/off switch.

Prerequisites

Before installing the plugin, you'll need:

• A WordPress site with admin access
• A verified domain in the Allspice Publisher Portal
• Recipe posts that are publicly accessible, with Allspice's IP address 34.171.197.31 allowlisted in any firewall or security plugin
• Recipe JSON-LD (schema.org Recipe) on every recipe post

Installing the plugin

The Allspice plugin is downloaded from the Publisher Portal. It is not listed in the WordPress.org plugin directory.

1. In the Publisher Portal, click your domain and open the WordPress tab
2. Click Download plugin to download allspice.zip
3. In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, choose the zip, and click Install Now
4. Click Activate

You only install it once. After that, the plugin updates itself from Allspice (see Updating the plugin).

Initial setup (after install)

After activation, connect the plugin to your domain:

1. In the Publisher Portal, click your domain and open the WordPress tab. Copy the Publisher ID, Domain ID, and Webhook Token.
2. In WordPress, open Settings → Allspice, paste them into the matching fields, and click Save Changes.
3. Click Sync All.

You can enter these before your domain is verified, but we recommend waiting until the domain's status in the Publisher Portal shows Ready, which means your recipes have synced.

If billing isn't set up for the domain yet, the settings page shows a Premium subscription required notice, and Allspice features stay off until you finish billing setup in the Publisher Portal.

How Allspice appears on your site

You don't need to place anything. With the recommended setup, the default for new installs, the plugin adds Allspice to your recipe pages automatically:

• Desktop - Floating. An adaptive rail on the edge of the screen opens a compact widget card in the bottom corner. A small “Ask Pico” bar sits above the recipe card.
• Mobile - Inline. The widget sits in the page directly above the recipe card, so it never covers floating video players or sticky ads.

The adaptive rail changes with the reader's position in the post: Jump to Recipe at the top, Ask Me Anything mid-article, Build Grocery List near the ingredients, and Start Cooking near the instructions. On pages that aren't recipes it becomes a Find a Recipe search button.

Widget style, rail position and colors, and the other display options are set in Settings → Allspice. See Widget configuration for every option, and Where Allspice appears to limit which pages Allspice appears on.

Optional: buttons

If you want an extra entry point somewhere specific, such as a “Search recipes” link in your header, you can add a custom button:

1. Add a data-allspice-id attribute with your button's ID to your element (copy it from the Button library's Non-WordPress view)
2. Choose which action it should trigger inside the Publisher Portal

Premade buttons (shortcodes, blocks, and automatic button placements) belong to the older Overlay setup and are deprecated. They still work on existing sites; see Buttons & entry points and Blocks & shortcodes.

Syncing changes from the Publisher Portal

WordPress picks up Publisher Portal changes (buttons, colors, actions, placements, theme) automatically about every 12 hours. To apply them right away:

1. In WordPress, go to Settings → Allspice
2. Click Sync Buttons & Settings

The three sync buttons do different things:

• Sync Buttons & Settings - pulls your buttons, theme, and portal settings.
• Sync Recipes - pulls the list of recipes Allspice has for your domain into WordPress. The plugin uses this list to decide which pages are recipe pages. It doesn't make Allspice re-read your posts.
• Sync All - both of the above.

WordPress Direct (recommended content source)

By default, Allspice finds your posts by crawling your public sitemap. With WordPress Direct, Allspice asks the Allspice plugin on your site for the list of posts instead. It's more complete and accurate than a sitemap, and it's the recommended setting for sites running the current plugin.

Turning it on

1. Make sure the plugin is up to date and your Webhook Token is saved in Settings → Allspice.
2. In the Publisher Portal, go to Integrate, click your domain, and open the General tab.
3. In the Content source card, set Source to WordPress Direct (recommended).

While a site is still on Crawl (sitemap), the Content source card may show a Last check note comparing how many posts the plugin reports with how many are in your sitemap, so you can see what switching would change. Switching doesn't re-import recipes you already have.

What Allspice reads

• Only published, public posts. Drafts, private posts, password-protected posts, and media attachments are never included.
• Each post's URL, type, last-modified date, and whether it's marked no-index in Yoast SEO, Rank Math, or SEOPress.
• If you turn on Include comments: approved comments, including your own replies. Unapproved and spam comments, and commenters' email and IP addresses, never leave your site.

Requests are authenticated with your domain's Webhook Token, so only Allspice can read them.

Options (WordPress Direct only)

• Show no-index recipes / Show no-index articles - off by default, which keeps posts you've marked no-index for search engines out of Allspice. Turning them off later hides those posts again; nothing is deleted.
• Include comments - off by default. Lets the assistant draw on the conversation under each recipe (see Include reader comments).

Requirements

• The WordPress REST API must be reachable from outside your site. If a security plugin or firewall blocks REST requests, allow /wp-json/allspice/v1/ (see Plugin compatibility).
• If Allspice can't reach the plugin during a sync, it falls back to your sitemap for that run, so your recipes stay up to date either way.

Performance & loading behavior

What Allspice loads

• A small loader script is added to every page, loaded asynchronously
• Everything else (the widget, buttons, and styles) loads only on recipe pages
• Recipe pages are identified by their schema.org Recipe JSON-LD

Core Web Vitals

Allspice's scripts don't block rendering, and the full widget starts up only when a reader first opens it.

Supported environments (dev / test)

Allspice works on production domains and on public dev environments. It won't work correctly on:

• private staging environments behind authentication
• sites that block Allspice's crawler (allowlist IP 34.171.197.31)
• sites Allspice can't read posts from: no public sitemap and WordPress Direct not turned on

Testing on your live site

You can try Allspice on one page of your production site before readers see it anywhere else:

1. In Settings → Allspice, scroll to Status & Debug → Front End.
2. Check Disable all Allspice output on the front end.
3. Enter a recipe URL in Demo page exception and click Save Front End Setting.

Allspice now runs only on that page. Syncing and your connection to Allspice keep working in the background, so when you're ready to launch, uncheck the box.

Updating the plugin

How updates work

Once installed, the plugin checks Allspice for new versions about every 12 hours. You don't need to download it from the portal again. New versions appear in Plugins like any other plugin update.

• To have updates installed automatically, click Enable auto-updates next to Allspice on the Plugins page
• To update right away, go to Dashboard → Updates, click Check again, then update Allspice

Uninstall / disable

Disable

1. Go to Plugins
2. Click Deactivate

Remove completely

Click Delete after deactivation.

Your Publisher Portal configuration and domain stay in place while the plugin is deactivated, so you can reactivate it at any time. To hide Allspice from readers without deactivating, use the front-end switch.