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.

Visit this page, and enter your email address to have your details sent to you. Alternatively, you can enter your Cbox account name or your embed code, and we will send a reset link to the email address we have on record.

If you do not receive the login details you expect via email, you can contact us. Under some circumstances we are able to recover a lost account.

Advertising offsets the cost of providing the free version of Cbox. You may upgrade your Cbox at any time to a paid plan, which removes all the ads and the Cbox branding, and also unlocks lots of other useful features.

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.

You can register a bot user at your Users page. Bot users are like ordinary registered users, except that instead of a password they are issued an access token. You cannot log in via the normal profile dialog. Instead, you can use the token directly in HTTP requests to Cbox.

We do not currently support an official API, but to demonstrate how you might read and post to your Cbox using a bot, the proof-of-concept PHP script below takes a simple HTTP-based approach. Run this script on your own server, and your bot will post to your Cbox. After its initial message, it will poll for messages containing trigger words, to which it will respond.

You can run the script from a shell, or have it run automatically with a crontab entry. When it's running, test it by entering a message in your Cbox such as "hello bot", "time?", or "what is the weather in new york?"

#!/usr/bin/php
<?php
define('LISTEN', true);
define('PID_FILE', './cboxbot.pid');

// Edit these lines for your Cbox and bot user. 
$box = array('srv' => 7, 'id' => 1, 'tag' => 'bOxTag');
$bot = array('name' => 'mybot', 'token' => 'XJC-bottoken-asKC', 'url' => '');
$msg = 'Hello world!';


$callmap = array(
	'/\bhello bot\b/iu' => 'bot_greet',
	'/\btime\?/iu' => 'bot_time',
	'/\bweather in ([a-zA-Z-0-9 ,]+)/iu' => 'bot_weather',
);

// Basic reply
function bot_time ($msg) {
	return date("M d Y H:i:s");
}

// An example incorporating message data. 
function bot_greet ($msg) {
	return "Hello ".$msg['name'];
}

// An example calling an external API
function bot_weather ($msg, $matches) {
	$place = $matches[1];

	if (!$place) {
		return;
	}

	$query = 'select * from weather.forecast where woeid in (select woeid from geo.places(1) where text="'.addslashes($place).'")';

	$url = 'https://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q='.urlencode($query).'&format=json&u=c&env=store%3A%2F%2Fdatatables.org%2Falltableswithkeys';

	$out = file_get_contents($url);

	if (!$out) {
		return;
	}

	$wobj = json_decode($out);

	if (!$wobj->query->results) {
		return;
	}

	$cond = $wobj->query->results->channel->item->condition;
	$desc = $wobj->query->results->channel->description;

	return "[b]".$cond->text." ".$cond->temp."F [/b] (".$desc." at ".$cond->date.")";
}


// Do not edit past this point. 

set_time_limit(0);


$id = cbox_post($msg, $bot, $box, $error);

if (!$id) {
	echo $error;
}
else {
	echo "Posted ID $id\n";
}

if (!LISTEN) {
	exit;
}

// Synchronization.
// PID file is not removed on exit, but it is unlocked. A locked file indicates a running process.
$fp = fopen(PID_FILE, 'a+');

if (!flock($fp, LOCK_EX | LOCK_NB)) {
	echo "Could not lock PID file. Process already running?\n"; 
	exit;
}

ftruncate($fp, 0);
fwrite($fp, posix_getpid()."\n");
fflush($fp);

do {

	$msgs = cbox_get_msgs($id, $bot, $box);

	if (!$msgs || !is_array($msgs)) {
		sleep(5);
		continue;
	}

	$id = (int)$msgs[0]['id'];

	for ($i = 0; $i < count($msgs); $i++) {
	
		if ($msgs[0]['name'] == $bot['name']) {
			continue;	// Ignore bot's own messages.
		}
	
		$msgtext = $msgs[$i]['message'];
		
		foreach ($callmap as $expr => $func) {
			$matches = array();
			
			if (preg_match($expr, $msgtext, $matches)) {
			
				$reply = call_user_func($func, $msgs[$i], $matches);
				
				if ($reply) {
					cbox_post($reply, $bot, $box, $error);
				}
			}
		}
	}
	
	sleep(2);
} while (true);


function cbox_get_msgs ($id, $user, $box, &$error = '') {
	$srv = $box['srv'];
	$boxid = $box['id'];
	$boxtag = $box['tag'];
	
	$host = "www$srv.cbox.ws";
	$path = "/box/?boxid=$boxid&boxtag=$boxtag&sec=archive";
	$port = 80;
	$timeout = 30;

	$get = array(
		'i' => (int)$id,
		'k' => $user['token'],
		'fwd' => 1,
		'aj' => 1
	);	

	$req = '';
	$res = '';
	
	foreach ($get as $k => $v) {
		$path .= "&$k=".urlencode($v);
	}
	
	$hdr  = "GET $path HTTP/1.1\r\n";
	$hdr .= "Host: $host\r\n\r\n";
	
	$fp = fsockopen ($host, $port, $errno, $errstr, $timeout);

	if (!$fp) {
		$error = "Could not open socket: $errno - $errstr\n";
		return;
	}

	fputs ($fp, $hdr);
	
	while (!feof($fp)) {
		$res .= fgets ($fp, 1024);
	}
	
	fclose ($fp);

	if (!$res || !strpos($res, "200 OK")) {
		$error = "Bad response:\r\n $res";
		return;
	}

	$matches = array();

	preg_match_all('/\n([^\t\n]*)\t([^\t]*)\t([^\t]*)\t([^\t]*)\t'
.'([^\t]*)\t([^\t]*)\t([^\t]*)\t([^\t]*)\t/', $res, $matches);

	$msgs = array();

	$map = array('id', 'time', 'date', 'name', 'group', 'url', 'message');

	for ($m = 0; $m < count($map); $m++) {
		for ($i = 0; $i < count($matches[$m+1]); $i++) {
			$msgs[$i][$map[$m]] = $matches[$m+1][$i];
		}
	}

	return $msgs;
}


function cbox_post ($msg, $user, $box, &$error = '') {
	$srv = $box['srv'];
	$boxid = $box['id'];
	$boxtag = $box['tag'];
	
	$host = "www$srv.cbox.ws";
	$path = "/box/?boxid=$boxid&boxtag=$boxtag&sec=submit";
	$port = 80;
	$timeout = 30;

	$post = array(
		'nme' => $user['name'],
		'key' => $user['token'],
		'eml' => $user['url'],
		'pst' => $msg,
		'aj' => '1'
	);	

	$req = '';
	$res = '';
	
	foreach ($post as $k => $v) {
		$req .= "$k=".urlencode($v)."&";
	}
	$req = substr($req, 0, -1);
	
	$hdr  = "POST $path HTTP/1.1\r\n";
	$hdr .= "Host: $host\r\n";
	$hdr .= "Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded\r\n";
	$hdr .= "Content-Length: ".strlen($req)."\r\n\r\n";
	
	$fp = fsockopen ($host, $port, $errno, $errstr, $timeout);

	if (!$fp) {
		$error = "Could not open socket: $errno - $errstr\n";
		return;
	}

	fputs ($fp, $hdr.$req);
	
	while (!feof($fp)) {
		$res .= fgets ($fp, 1024);
	}
	
	fclose ($fp);

	if (!$res || !strpos($res, "200 OK")) {
		$error = "Bad response:\r\n $res";
		return;
	}

	$matches = array();

	preg_match('/1(.*)\t(.*)\t(.*)\t(.*)\t(.*)\t(.*)/', $res, $matches);

	$err = $matches[1];
	$id = $matches[6];

	if ($err) {
		$error = "Got error from Cbox: $err";
		return;
	}

	return $id;
}
?>

Check out the control panel. Cbox is highly customizable, and the options are arranged in the control panel into sections. Some options are only available on paid plans. These will usually be greyed-out. Upgrading will unlock these options, but will not automatically enable them.

Most changes to settings will take effect immediately, but some will require that you refresh the page that your Cbox is on. If you have embedded your Cbox on your website, you will generally not need to reinstall it. Settings that change your embed code will notify you of this.