Why does the AI writer return nothing?

marquezblog

Hi All, why would an AI writer plugin return empty text as soon as I put my own API key in? Client blog, guitar lessons, Elementor Pro, Raiola shared hosting. The plugin came with the site. With the key the previous owner left it wrote fine then that key stopped so I made my own account at the provider and pasted the new key. Now I press Generate, it spins for a few seconds and the box stays empty, no error, nothing. The key itself works, at least in the provider's playground it answers so I'm not sure that proves much. Where would this plugin even show an error, in your case where do you look?

Rickey

The playground answering proves the key is valid not that the account can be billed. Two different things at most providers. The playground runs on whatever trial credit the new account came with and the API behind your plugin needs a payment method or prepaid credit on the account, otherwise every call comes back as a quota error.

And most of these writer plugins swallow that error. The box just stays empty.

I got this on a dog training LMS i'm building, key fine in the playground. Nothing in the plugin and the usage page said insufficient quota with zero spend.

So open the provider's billing or usage page, add a card or a few dollars of credit and press Generate again. Your config can stay.

christopher

Hello @Rickey, billing is my bet too. Same story in a thread here last month.

Marquezblog, welcome. To see the error it's easier to turn on WP_DEBUG_LOG in wp-config, press Generate once and open wp-content/debug.log, most of these plugins write the API answer there.

How to: https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/debugging-in-wordpress/ tbh takes two minutes.

marquezblog

Ok, added 10 dollars, short texts work now! Half fixed, a 1500 word lesson still comes back empty, debug.log says timeout now.

christopher

Hit that on the plumbing site as well. This happens when the host kills PHP after about 30 seconds and a 1500 word lesson takes longer to come back so the plugin never gets an answer.

I'd ask Raiola to raise max_execution_time (https://www.php.net/manual/en/info.configuration.php) or generate in sections. Both work.

Rickey

or change the model before you call the host. Most of these plugins have a model dropdown in the settings and the default is usually the big slow one. The smaller model writes a 1500 word lesson in a third of the time and nobody reading about guitar chords will notice...

Would Raiola even raise it on shared? SiteGround said no.

One page in one request keeps hitting a wall somewhere anyway, on your end I'd do sections.

marquezblog

who knew the robot wanted paying first?

Section by section works, a full lesson page is four clicks now; I'm not sure the plugin is worth its 99 a year for that.

Marking Rickey's answer as the solution, billing was the real fault.

On mobile, sorry. Thanks!