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.

Yes, you can have as many as you like! Create a separate account for each Cbox. You will need a unique account name for each, but we recommend using the same email address.

If you need a large number of Cboxes, you might want to be on our Cbox Pro plan. Cbox Pro supports channels, which are independent conversation threads. Each channel can be embedded or linked as if it were a separate Cbox, and will host a separate conversation. Channels share the same theme, settings and users, and you only need one control panel login to manage them.

The user's IP address is probably changing. Cbox has a feature that allows you to strengthen bans so that certain kinds of changing (dynamic) IPs are blocked by a single ban. Cbox Pro has additional features that can pre-emptively ban users of proxies.

Go to your bans page, and select the ban(s) that are not effective. Then click the "Strengthen" button in the top-right. This will "widen the net" on the selected bans. You can click Strengthen again to widen the net even further.

Note that strengthened bans are more likely to affect other people, especially other customers of the same ISP, because they constitute a range of IP addresses. A doubly-strengthened ban covers about 65 000 IP addresses.

If you have a paid Cbox, you have access control features you should enable, including the option to require users to register their names before posting. You can also control whether your users are able to register their own names. You can disable this second option to take control over registration; simply deleting a registered user will then prevent that person from posting, regardless of IP, because they cannot register a new name.

With a Pro Cbox, you can enable "Auto-ban proxies" at your Settings page. Your Cbox will detect proxies, VPNs and Tor exit nodes and will automatically and temporarily ban users who attempt to post from behind such services.

A Moderated Cbox requires that messages be manually approved before they are published.

Normally, all users can post to your public Cbox, and everyone can see their messages. If you enable Moderated chat, then only voiced users can post directly. Unvoiced users' messages are redirected to a special channel where moderators can view and approve them.

This setting enables proactive moderation. It's important if you are concerned about your platform's brand but still want your Cbox to be publicly-accessible. It's also useful if you host live chats where you may want to control the volume and relevance of published messages by accepting only the ones you want, and at the appropriate time.

Using Moderated chat

For testing, it's helpful to open another instance of your Cbox in an incognito/private tab. This allows you to log in as a guest in one tab and as a Mod in the other.

When you enable this setting, a shadow channel is created. Regular users cannot access it, but a Mod or Admin user on the public Cbox will see a "mod channel" link or "thumbs up" button. Clicking this button opens the shadow channel, and shows any messages that are awaiting approval. These messages can be published (i.e. re-posted) to the public Cbox by clicking the [a]/"tick" button in the mod tools next to each message.

Voice permission

Note that when users register they do not automatically get voice. So, if you have existing registered users, before you enable Moderated chat, you might first want to voice them.

Mods and admins always have voice. This means they can always post directly to your public Cbox. Registered users (other than mods and admins) can be voiced and unvoiced from within your Cbox by clicking the [v]/"plus" button in the mod tools next to their messages. Unregistered guest users cannot be granted this permission, however.

Voice permission grants a user direct publication access to your Cbox, without any of the special permissions of mods or admins. It is useful in cases where the user is trusted and/or conversation established.

Moderated channels

Moderation works in conjunction with channels, too. The global setting controls whether new channels are created in Moderated mode or not. The per-channel setting is maintained even if the global setting is later changed.

We don't automatically throttle or curtail access to Cboxes that go over their respective views per day or messages per day limits. There is no need to police activity levels or to expect disruption simply because your Cbox is popular.

However, our resources are shared between all customers. In the event that we experience temporary overloading, we may need to take emergency action in order to ensure service continuity for as many users as possible. In order to meet demand under overload conditions, Cboxes that are furthest over their limits may be subject to increased latency and/or interruptions until load normalizes again.

For this reason, we advise that if your Cbox consistently exceeds the daily views/messages thresholds, you upgrade to a plan with higher capacity, or contact us if you are unsure of your requirements.

Your Cbox is also limited in the total number of messages it can store. When you reach this limit, the oldest messages are removed from the public history. If you have a paid plan, you can still retrieve messages up to three months old via your archive page.

First try recovering your password. If your account is not found or you do not receive the email, the account may have been closed.

Cbox reserves account names for some time after an account is closed. If you want to use the same account name, we can sometimes assist if you contact us.