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.

Cbox Pro provides a very simple API for creating new channels on the fly.

At the Channels page in your control panel you will find your secret API URL. You can open this URL directly in your browser to test it, but it's intended to be called by back-end scripts running on your own site.

The return format for this call is a single line of tab-separated plain-text fields. If there was an error, the first field is "FAIL" and the second field is an error code. If a new thread was successfully generated, the first field is "OK", and the second and third fields are the thread ID and thread key, respectively.

By way of example, this very simple PHP script will generate threads for your Cbox. New threads created via the API will show up in your control panel, but you should store the thread ID and key in your own database as well.

<?php 
$cb_tid = null;
$cb_tkey = null;

$cb_rs = file_get_contents('YOUR_API_URL', 'r');

$cb_rp = explode("\t", $cb_rs);

if ($cb_rp[0] === 'FAIL') {
	// There was an error. 
	// $cb_rp[1] contains the error code
}
else if ($cb_rp[0] === 'OK') {
	// Success
	$cb_tid = $cb_rp[1];
	$cb_tkey = $cb_rp[2];
}
else {
	// Some other error occured.
}

if ($cb_tid && $cb_tkey) {
	// New key generated. Store $cb_tid and $cb_tkey in your database or user session.
	// And insert them into your Cbox HTML code iframe src URLs: 
	// ....&sec=main&tid=<?php echo $cb_tid;?>&tkey=<?php echo $cb_tkey;?>
	// ....&sec=form&tid=<?php echo $cb_tid;?>&tkey=<?php echo $cb_tkey;?>
}
?>

This is usually caused by the Lock option in your Control panel. Click the "Unlock" button to return your Cbox to normal.

If your Cbox says it is expired, it will need to be renewed. After renewal it will be unlocked automatically.

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.

The account name that you log in with at the Cbox control panel is also your Quick Link address. You can change your account name at the Account details page. This will change your Quick Link address at the same time.

If you have forgotten your account name and are unable to log in, you can reset your password at this page.

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.