OpenStation vs Echo Knowledge Base – Documentation, FAQs, Chat & Smart Search

wp-admin forgets. OpenStation doesn’t. You know the moment. You’re deep in a post and you need one image from the Media Library. You click over, find it, click back, and everything you had going is gone. Your scroll position, your half-typed thought, the three other things you had queued up in your head. That’s not a bug you hit. That’s the design. wp-admin shows you one screen at a time, and every navigation throws the last one away. It has worked this way since 2003, like a fridge that empties itself every time you close the door. WordPress has rebuilt almost everything else. The editor, the site editor, the patterns, the styles. The admin’s one-screen-at-a-time model is the layer nobody touched. OpenStation touches it. Install it and admin screens become draggable, resizable windows. Edit a post while the Media Library sits open next to it. Drag an image from one window straight into the other. Keep comments open in the corner. Reload the browser and your window layout — open pages, positions, sizes, and window states — comes back where you left it. OpenStation itself is free, GPL, and opt-in per user. One click in the admin bar turns it on for you. One click turns it off. Nobody else on your site sees anything change, and deactivating the plugin restores the classic admin exactly. No Core patches and no lock-in. Optional AI providers may charge for their service. Built and maintained by Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Jetpack, WooCommerce, and Tumblr. Work on more than one thing at once Admin pages open as windows, including pages added by most other plugins. Drag them, resize them, snap them, tile them, minimize them to a taskbar. The admin menu becomes a dock of icons. Two editors open at once is one click away. Never lose your place Moving between open windows leaves each page in place. Across reloads, OpenStation remembers your open pages, window positions, sizes and states, virtual desktops, and focus. Closing a window with unsaved changes warns you first. A desk you can actually put things on Drop posts, media, and links right onto the wallpaper. Sort them into folders. Trash them to a Trash that actually holds things. The stuff you’re working on this week can just sit out where you can see it. One desktop per job Virtual desktops, the way your operating system does them. One for writing. One for the store. One for comment triage. One for that redesign you keep poking at. Switch between them without closing anything. Find anything with Cmd+K The full WordPress command palette, plus slash commands from your plugins, all under one keystroke. Turn on the optional AI assistant and you can ask it things like “which post had the comment asking for the recipe?” and it searches your own content to answer. (Requires an AI provider configured in Settings → Connectors on WordPress 7.0+. Details under “External services” below.) See how your site fits together The Corkboard is an interactive, zoomable map of how your posts, pages, and products link to each other. Pan around it. Find the orphans. Find the hubs. Running a store? Orders, Products, Coupons, and Customers become browsable folders with stock and sale ribbons. Open a customer to see their lifetime spend and what they buy most. Follow a product to its buyers, or a coupon to who redeemed it. Make it yours Wallpapers, from color presets to animated scenes to your own photo. Live widgets pinned to the desktop: drafts, stats, recent comments, a focus timer. Uploadable desktop themes, including a built-in Legacy theme that brings the old WordPress blue back in one click. And Mio, a soft-body desk companion that drifts across your wallpaper and gets bumped around by your windows. Off by default. You’ll turn it on. For developers Extend OpenStation through documented PHP and JavaScript APIs. Register windows, icons, wallpapers, widgets, commands, and settings tabs through stable openstation_register_* PHP APIs and a typed JavaScript API; customize dock items through documented hooks; add AI tools with the WordPress Abilities API. Copy-paste examples live in the developer docs on GitHub. External services No external service is required for OpenStation’s desktop interface. The optional AI Assistant and two user-initiated enrichment features make the external requests described below. AI Assistant The optional AI Assistant sends data to the AI provider you configure in WordPress’s Settings → Connectors (for example OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google). Generation is routed through WordPress 7.0’s built-in AI Client, which supplies the credentials stored in Connectors. The plugin never handles an API key itself. With no provider configured in Connectors, no external AI requests are made. When the AI Assistant is enabled and a user invokes it (via Cmd+K or the slash-command palette): What is sent: the user’s prompt, the conversation history for the active session, and tool-call metadata. The plugin’s built-in tools (search_posts, search_pages, search_comments) run WordPress’s native keyword search and may include excerpts of the matching posts/pages/comments in tool results, which are then sent back to the provider as part of the agentic loop. When it is sent: on user-initiated AI requests, and (if an administrator enables “Score new comments with AI”) on comment-save hooks for spam analysis. Posts, pages, and taxonomy terms are not sent automatically. Why it is sent: to obtain model completions and tool-call decisions that drive the AI Assistant. Who provides the service: whichever provider you configured in Settings → Connectors. Which provider (and endpoint) receives the data depends entirely on that configuration. Review the chosen provider’s own terms and privacy policy (e.g. OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google). URL shortcut favicons When an authorized user creates a desktop shortcut to an external URL, OpenStation asks that URL for its page HTML and favicon so the shortcut can display the site’s icon. The request is made from your WordPress server and sends the requested URL, the server’s IP address, an OpenStation user-agent string, and normal HTTP request metadata to the operator of that site. This happens only when a user creates the shortcut. The destination site’s terms and privacy policy apply. WordPress.org plugin information When an authorized user opens or refreshes parts of OpenStation’s Plugins window, OpenStation may request public plugin details, update metadata, and review excerpts from WordPress.org. These requests send plugin slugs, the site’s locale, and normal HTTP request metadata to WordPress.org. This information is used only to display and manage plugins. Review the WordPress.org Privacy Policy. OpenStation’s OAuth relay does not contact a service by itself. Third-party plugins that configure the relay may contact their own providers and are responsible for disclosing those services. Credits OpenStation is brought to you by Automattic. The plugin is open source under GPLv2-or-later; contributions are welcome on GitHub. Third-party libraries The plugin bundles the following third-party JavaScript library, loaded on demand only when a feature that needs it is in use: PixiJS (MIT License) — used by the Corkboard window, built-in canvas wallpapers (e.g. the animated WordPress logo), the Mio desk companion, and the Inkfall typing game. PixiJS is loaded from the plugin’s own assets/vendor/ directory; no CDN requests are made. Data files The Inkfall game’s word list (assets/games/inkfall/words.txt) is generated from the following sources (attribution also ships in the file’s header): FrequencyWords by Hermit Dave (CC-BY-SA 4.0) — English word-frequency ranking derived from the OpenSubtitles corpus. english-words by dwyl (Unlicense) — used as a validity filter. LDNOOBW English list (CC-BY 4.0) — used as an exclusion filter.

Echo Knowledge Base is a powerful documentation tool that helps you create and organize documentation, FAQs, quizzes, and articles. It includes built-in AI search and AI chatbot features and includes comprehensive features to help you build a visually appealing knowledge base. Designed with a modern and professional appearance by default, the plugin offers extensive customization options to align perfectly with your brand identity. FREE KB FEATURES Fast Search Bar: Enable users to find articles quickly with an AJAX-powered search bar. Deep Content Organization: Organize articles into categories and subcategories up to five levels deep. Display articles and categories across tabs or in an intuitive drill-down format. FAQs Layout and Shortcode: Deploy FAQs anywhere on your site with various eye-catching designs. Group questions logically and control their behavior for optimal user engagement. Article Enhancement Tools: Improve user experience with breadcrumbs, next/previous article navigation, print and PDF export options, and more. Table of Contents (TOC): Enhance navigation with a customizable table of contents on article pages for better user experience. Frontend Visual Editor: Customize your Knowledge Base pages live on the front-end with our intuitive visual editor or drag-and-drop Gutenberg blocks. Pre-made Layout Designs: Choose from many beautiful designs and layouts to make your knowledge base both stunning and functional. With dozens of combinations available, you’ll find the perfect look for your site. Most Popular and Recent Articles: Display lists of articles by popularity and recent publication to guide readers to trending and new content. Glossary: Build a centralized dictionary of terms and definitions for your knowledge base. Glossary Terms – Create and manage glossary entries. Published terms are automatically highlighted in your articles with interactive tooltips, helping readers understand key terminology without leaving the page. Glossary Index Shortcode and Block – Display an alphabetical index of all glossary terms on any page using the [epkb-glossary-index] shortcode or the Glossary Index Gutenberg block, with letter navigation and customizable accent color. AI-Generated Glossary Terms (PRO) – Automatically generate glossary terms and definitions from your knowledge base content using AI, saving time and ensuring comprehensive coverage of key terminology. Article Quizzes: Add interactive quizzes to KB articles to reinforce learning and increase engagement. Create custom multiple-choice or true/false questions, add answer explanations, and show published quizzes below the article content. Article Views Counter: Track views with the built-in counter and analyze your most and least popular content to optimize your knowledge base. Customizable Category Archive Page: Customize the category archive page with a custom header, description, and image. FREE AI FEATURES (Optional) All AI features are completely optional and disabled by default. You can enable them at any time if you choose to use AI-powered capabilities. AI Chat (Chatbot): Add a frontend chat dialog where users and visitors can ask questions and get instant AI-powered answers based on on your Knowledge Base, FAQs, internal documentation, notes, and any other source of information. AI Search: When users search, results show relevant KB articles plus an ‘Ask AI’ button to dive deeper with the same query. AI Content Analysis: Automatically analyze your knowledge base articles for quality and optimization. Get AI-powered insights including: Tags Analysis – Optimize article tags and categories for better organization and SEO Readability Score – Evaluate content clarity and structure with AI assistance Learn more. PRO KB FEATURES Advanced Search: Highlight search keywords on article pages, filter search by category, adjust search box styling, and add helper text or links below the search bar. Use advanced search analytics to discover popular queries and identify searches with no results. Granular Content Protection: Control access to documentation based on user groups, WordPress roles, or custom permissions. Seamlessly manage public and private knowledge base content. Unlimited Knowledge Bases: Create unlimited separate knowledge bases, each with its own articles, categories, and tags (great for managing multiple products or departments). Articles Import and Export: Import or export articles and categories using CSV or XML formats for easy migration or backup. AI Smart Search: Display intelligent search results with optional multi-panel sections User Feedback System: Gather valuable insights with article upvote/downvote and feedback forms. Article Links: Turn any article into a link that points to PDFs, external documentation, videos, or other resources. AI Features: Content Gap Analysis AI Quiz Generation – generate quiz drafts from KB articles, then review and edit the title, intro, questions, answers, and explanations before publishing Expand training to include notes, posts, pages, and custom post types Email Notifications for AI insights Human Agent Handoff – lets users escalate from AI to your support team Feedback Buttons – collect thumbs-up/down ratings on AI responses PDF to Articles – upload PDF files and convert them into KB articles with optional AI formatting that organizes content into headings, lists, and paragraphs PDF to Notes – upload PDF files via drag-and-drop or the Media Library and convert them into AI training notes to expand your AI’s knowledge beyond KB articles AI Chat Access Control – restrict who can use AI Chat: everyone, logged-in users only, or specific WordPress roles. Set different access rules for each chat location See the official website for more details on Pro features. ⭐ WALK-THROUGH OF ECHO KNOWLEDGE BASE Watch a quick introduction to Echo Knowledge Base and see it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLwj8FpfBWc ⭐ PROFESSIONAL LAYOUTS INCLUDED Echo Knowledge Base comes with multiple layout options to suit your style: Basic Layout – Clean and simple design Tabs Layout – Organized content in tabbed interface Drill Down Layout – Intuitive navigation through categories Classic Layout – Traditional documentation style Category Focused Layout – Highlight your main categories See our comprehensive documentation here ⭐ ADDITIONAL FEATURES Gutenberg Blocks: Seamlessly integrate knowledge base elements using the WordPress block editor. Flexible Ordering: Order articles and categories alphabetically, by date, or manually with drag-and-drop. SEO Optimization: Built with SEO best practices to help your documentation rank well in search engines. Usage Analytics: Monitor knowledge base traffic and search queries to understand what users need. Interactive Learning: Turn knowledge base articles into quizzes with answer explanations to help readers retain information. Multilingual & RTL Support: Fully compatible with WPML, Polylang, GTranslate, and supports right-to-left languages. Responsive Design: Mobile-friendly and works with any WordPress theme, so your docs look great on all devices. Directory Shortcode: Use a shortcode to display an index of all articles (great for an A-Z index page). Multi-site Compatible: Perfect for WordPress multisite networks – manage documentation across multiple sites. Custom URL Structure: Customize category, tag, and article URLs for a clean and branded structure. Mobile Optimization: Ensures a smooth reading experience on smartphones and tablets. Content Migration: Easily convert existing posts or custom post types into Knowledge Base articles. ⭐ SEO & ACCESSIBILITY OPTIMIZED Echo Knowledge Base is optimized for search engines and adheres to accessibility standards. It supports multiple languages (including RTL scripts) and meets WCAG guidelines, making your documentation usable for a global audience. All layouts are fully responsive and retina-ready, so your knowledge base looks sharp on every device. ⭐ EASY TO STYLE WITH PRE-MADE DESIGNS No coding needed – make it your knowledge base with just a few clicks: 26 Pre-Made Designs: Choose from a variety of professional color schemes and styles. One-Click Theme Switching: Swap layouts (Basic, Tabs, Category-Focused, Classic, Drill Down, Sidebar, Grid, etc.) instantly to find the perfect look. Endless Customization: Further tweak colors, fonts, and styles to match your brand. ⭐ BUILDER COMPATIBILITY Echo Knowledge Base works great with popular page builders: Elementor & Gutenberg: Comes with native blocks and widgets for seamless integration. Other Builders: Fully compatible with Beaver Builder, Divi, Visual Composer, and more. ✅ WHY CHOOSE ECHO KNOWLEDGE BASE? User-Friendly: Designed for ease of use – no coding required and a gentle learning curve. All-in-One Support Hub: Manage documentation, FAQs, quizzes, AI chat, and smart search in one plugin. Professional Design: 26 beautiful, ready-to-use layouts give your docs a polished look out of the box. Highly Customizable: Extensive configuration options to tailor the knowledge base to your needs. Reliable Support: Our friendly, Canadian-based support team is ready to help with any questions. Regular Updates: Continuously improved with new features (our roadmap is packed with upcoming enhancements!). Global Ready: Translate your documentation and serve users in any language with full multilingual support. About Us: We are a Canadian company with over a decade of experience in WordPress and web technologies. We’re passionate about helping you provide better support to your customers.