Help & Support

Your Cbox embed code is available at your control panel. You need this code to install your Cbox on your website.

Also on that page is your Quick Link — a URL which you can use to access your Cbox directly in your browser or on your mobile device.

Once you have created your Cbox account, go to the Publish page of your control panel. The code and steps for embedding your Cbox are provided there for a number of common platforms.

If you install your Cbox and all you see is code, or nothing at all, your web host may be removing or otherwise interfering with the HTML iframe tags that Cbox uses. Your Cbox code needs to be pasted into an area of your site that accepts HTML without modification. This may mean switching your editor from "rich text" or "WYSIWYG" mode into HTML-editing or "raw" mode, or you may need to open your template files in a plain-text editor like Notepad.

Remember that you always have the option of posting or sharing your Cbox Quick Link — this gives visitors direct access to your Cbox in a full-screen layout, so it's perfect as a mobile option or for stand-alone use.

Go to the Theme editor in your control panel. There you can specify the fonts and colours of your Cbox, using a point-and-click editor. You can always reset your theme to one of the preset defaults there, if you would like to start again.

If you have a Premium or Pro Cbox you can edit CSS, which gives you complete control over presentation.

If you have a Premium or Pro Cbox, you can create a moderator name for yourself at your Users page, and then log in on your Cbox using the "profile" link. You will see a delete icon [x] next to each message in your Cbox, and you will not have to log in at your control panel at all to delete messages.

Alternatively, visit your Messages page to delete messages individually or in bulk. Deleted messages are removed from your public Cbox history, but are preserved in your Archives.

Yes. In the Theme editor, simply delete the colour codes for the main and form background ("BG") elements. This will make the Cbox transparent, allowing whatever is behind the Cbox to show through.

Note that any pop-ups generated by a transparent Cbox will have the default background colour — usually white. If your font colour is light, it may be invisible in popups. You can fix this by editing the CSS to introduce a background-color rule for popups.

With a paid Cbox, you can enable the option "Users must be registered" at the Users page in your control panel.

If you are using Integration, then there are two ways to disable access for a particular user. The easiest is to register the "Guest" name, then immediately ban it.

You can also invalidate names in your Integration code. For example, use a conditional and clear the nme and nmekey parameters:

<?php
if ($nme == "Guest") {
  $nme = "";
  $nmekey = "";
}
// The rest of your Integration code goes here...
?>

When you ban a user in your Cbox by clicking the [o] ban button, or at your Messages page, Cbox will ban the name as well as the IP address.

You can also prevent a name from being used by reserving it. To reserve a name, register it at the Users page, without a password. Nobody will be able to log in with this name. If it is already registered, delete the name and re-register it with a blank password.

Because emoticons and filtering rules require additional message processing time, we have a limit on the number that can be defined per Cbox. The limits vary by plan and you can upgrade if you need to increase them.

If you later downgrade your plan, your limits will be reduced but we will not automatically delete any of your data.

Cbox has traditionally supported HTML in filters and sticky messages for paid accounts. For security reasons this option is not enabled by default. Furthermore, in HTML mode, some other features of Cbox may be limited or disabled.

If HTML mode is disabled on your Cbox, then you can add markup and colour to your filters and stickies using boxcode, which supports a range of HTML-like tags.

If you are currently using HTML mode, we strongly recommend disabling it and using boxcode instead — this will help to ensure that your Cbox is as secure as possible and compatible with all features.

There are a number of factors that can account for a difference in the number of users shown as online, even if your tracker code is placed on exactly the same pages as your Cbox.

One reason for count inaccuracy is that it's often impossible to get positive confirmation that a visitor has left the page. Cbox applies a fixed timeout of three minutes to each session, after which the user is considered offline. A tracker with a longer timeout may show a larger number of visitors online. Cbox also does not require a user to keep interacting to be considered online (they will be marked as idle instead). A tracker that shows only active users may have a lower count.

Cbox counts users differently depending depending on whether they are named or not. A named user in general is one who has previously interacted with your Cbox, for example by posting a message in it. All other visitors are considered to be anonymous guests. To maximize the privacy of your visitors, Cbox does not send cookies or other tracking information to anonymous visitors' browsers, and instead uses a passive IP-based method to count them. This can cause inaccuracy in the anonymous-guest component of your total. If multiple anonymous visitors share an IP address behind the same NAT device, for example, then they will be undercounted; if their IP address is changing frequently, they may be overcounted.

Recognized, named users are tracked more precisely, and will only be counted once, regardless of how many tabs or devices they are using your Cbox in.