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.

You can move your Cbox embed code around in your HTML to make your Cbox show up in a different place. You can also make it align to the centre or right side of the page, by editing the code a little.

Your code may include something like this:

position: relative; margin: 0 auto;

Remove margin: 0 auto; to eliminate the centering. You can replace it with float: left; or float: right; to make your Cbox move to the left or right, respectively.

To move it up or down on your page, you'll need to move the code to a different part of your layout. If you have access to the HTML of your page but don't know HTML, test different places to see which works best.

Other code variations may have different position methods, but can usually be edited in CSS. For example, the "fixed button" code includes inline CSS which controls its position on the page.

You need some development experience to make use of this feature, with the ability to edit your site's back-end code.

Cbox Pro supports Integration, which is a way to implement single sign-on. If users already log in or register with your site, Integration means they don't have to enter their name again on your Cbox.

Configure Integration at your control panel. Example code is available there. The rest of this article deals with general concerns.

How it works

Integration is implemented using query string parameters appended to the Cbox iframe URL. The final parameter is a signature generated from the rest of the URL. You don't need any external components or callbacks, just language support for HMAC-SHA256, base64-encoding, and url-encoding.

The signature is important to secure the generated URL against tampering by the user or any other intermediary. However, most back-end platforms have built-in support for the necessary functions.

Integrating avatars and profile links

The only required parameter is nme, for the user's name, and the signature, sig. But you can also pass lnk and pic parameters to Cbox, to take advantage of name links and avatars, respectively. These should be provided as absolute URLs. For example, https://yoursite.example.com/path/to/image.gif. Note that the respective display settings need to be enabled for name links or avatars to show up.

Integrating with mod/admin permissions

Integrated users' names will be registered with Cbox automatically, if they aren't already. This means you can confer mod/admin permissions at your Users page.

You can also use Integration with Moderated chat. With Moderated mode enabled, your Integrated users by default will not have voice permission. You will be able to review their messages as a mod or admin user in your Cbox and approve them accordingly.

Security

Note that if you have existing users registered before enabling Integration, they are authenticated by Integration regardless of their password. This means if you have an existing "admin" user registered with a password on your Cbox, and you then enable Integration, the corresponding user named "admin" on your site will get that name (and permission). This can be an advantage, but if it's a risk in your case, delete all registered users before enabling Integration.

The signature in the Integrated Cbox URL protects the name and other information in transit. However, if you are concerned about leaked URLs, you can limit URL validity by passing an additional (signed) query string parameter, valid_to, which should be set to a UNIX timestamp. The URL will stop working after the time specified.

You can also change the key used to generate the signature, by changing your security tag. This invalidates all your Cbox URLs, but requires that you change your published Cbox embed code accordingly.

Debugging

If you get an error in your Cbox saying that there's a problem with Integration, the most common cause is an invalid signature.

The first thing to do is right-click and inspect the Cbox iframe URL. You should have nme=...&sig=... parameters populated in the query string. If not, check that your embed code is in place and being parsed without errors.

If the sig parameter is present in the URL, confirm that it is being generated using the correct secret key. The key is available at your Integration page.

Ensure that you are url-encoding your query string parameters exactly once, and encoding before calculating the signature. The signature itself must then also be url-encoded, and appended to the URL. If you see the sequence %25XX in the URL, that's a sign that you might be applying url-encoding to already url-encoded strings.

If you are still getting errors, contact us including the code you are using and an example URL, and we should be able to assist.

This is the message that shows when your Cbox is accessed from an address other than the one specified at your Publish page, when you have the option "Allow access only at this address" enabled.

A common reason for this to happen is that you have entered an address that is more specific than it needs to be — for example, including the "www." at the beginning when your visitors don't need to include that to reach your website. Most of the time "mysite.com" works just as well as "www.mysite.com", but if you have specified "www.mysite.com" as the only address to allow access at, then Cbox will show an error when you arrive at your site via "mysite.com".

The solution is to simplify the address so it covers all the legitimate routes to your page, or turn off the option "Allow access only at this address."

Moderation is available on paid Cboxes. Messages on a free Cbox can only be deleted via the control panel only.

You can create a mod or admin name at your Users page, either by selecting one of the existing registered names and clicking the "Mod" button, or by creating a new registered user with Moderator or Administrator status using the form on that page.

To log in with a mod/admin name on your Cbox, enter the name in the "name" box, click the "profile" link at the bottom-right, and then enter the password.

After successfully logging in, you should see [x] and [o] icons next to each message in your Cbox. Clicking the [x] deletes a message, while clicking [o] bans the user that posted the message.

Your Cbox is not at its full potential unless you upgrade to a paid plan.

Upgrading unlocks features like user registration and moderation, private messaging, and priority support: things essential for getting the most out of your Cbox. See our product comparison.

We offer a 30-day money-back guarantee on all purchases, so if you aren't sure it'll be worth it, you have nothing to lose by finding out.

You can also upgrade for a friend – simply enter their Cbox account name on the upgrade page instead of your own.