Help & Support
Our help database contains answers to most of the common questions regarding our products.
If you are unable to locate a satisfactory answer for your query by searching here, please contact us.
Ban and kick: what's the difference?
When you ban a user, they are not able to post to your Cbox for the duration of the ban. They will also not be able to use any other features, such as private messaging. The default ban duration is one day.
Kicking a user, by contrast, simply disconnects them from your Cbox. Their view of your Cbox will go blank, and they won't be able to see any new messages, nor post.
Unlike a ban however, a kick is not continuously enforced. A kicked user can re-load your Cbox to re-join and resume viewing and posting. For this reason, kicking can be useful as a deterrent or warning — or simply to drop idle users — but it cannot prevent a user from returning to your Cbox.
How do I ban / unban someone?
If you have a Premium or Pro Cbox, you can create a moderator account for yourself here, and then ban people with one click while logged in to your Cbox. You will see [x][o] links next to each message. Clicking the [o] will ban that user.
Alternatively, go to your Messages page, select a message from the user you want to ban, and click the "Ban" link.
Your Blocked users page lists the bans currently in force. To unban someone, select the ban and click "Unban". Bans that show as "expired" will be cleared within a few minutes.
I am banned on my own Cbox!
This can happen when you are using the same ISP as a user who was banned on your Cbox — either you are sharing an IP address, or you are being assigned dynamic IP addresses. To unban yourself, go to your Bans page and unban the most recent bans one by one until you are able to post again.
How do I ban a user by name?
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.
I banned someone and they are still able to post. What can I do?
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.
How can I prevent spam and abuse on my Cbox?
First decide whether the messages appear to be automated, or coming from an individual user.
Cbox works hard to prevent automated spam from reaching your Cbox. However if you are having trouble with such spam, you can require all users to solve a CAPTCHA before posting, by changing your CAPTCHA setting to "Strict" at your Settings page.
For spam from an individual user, first try banning the user. At your Messages page, select the unwanted messages and click "Ban". With a paid Cbox, you can ban the user from within your Cbox by logging in as a mod user.
Abusive users may attempt to evade bans by accessing your Cbox from behind an anonymizing proxy, via a VPN, Tor, or similar service. With a Pro Cbox, you can enable "Auto-ban proxies" at your Settings. You can also enable "Strong bans" there, which makes bans more resilient against changing IP addresses. However, it also increases the risk of bans affecting other users.
You can also strengthen individual bans by selecting them in your Blocked users list and clicking "Strengthen". This "widens the net" on an IP ban. Note that this can prevent other users of the same ISP from accessing your Cbox, so you should ensure the duration is short on such bans.
If you have a Premium or Pro Cbox, you have more access control options. It's recommended to always enable the option "Users must be registered to post". Normally, you would also enable "Users can password-protect their names" so that they can register themselves; for more control, you can disable this option and register users manually.
You can also choose to disable new registrations temporarily to "lock down" your Cbox. Existing users will still be able to log in and post.
Finally, if you disable the option "Users can password-protect their names" you can still enable "Users can authenticate via Facebook" — now new users can join your Cbox via Facebook, but if they are banned then their Facebook identity is also blocked.
Some other things you can do if you experience recurring abuse of your Cbox:
- Delegate moderator authority (Premium and Pro) to trusted users who are able to monitor your Cbox during times you are not.
- Use Moderated Chat mode (Pro) to prevent users posting directly to public chat. Their messages will need to be approved by a mod.
- Place your Cbox in a members-only or private area of your site, such that users must log in to your site before they can see your Cbox.
- Implement User Integration (Cbox Pro), which ensures that only users who are registered on your own site can post.
- Configure and enable the Site whitelist (Premium and Pro). This prevents your Cbox embed code from being displayed on any other site.
- Generate a new Security tag and republish your Cbox embed code. This revokes access for any user who may have a link to your Cbox but no longer has access to the page it is embedded on.
- Disable the Quick link. This will prevent users from being able to access your Cbox except via the page you have embedded it on.
Finally, if abuse continues, you should contact us. We want to keep all Cboxes free from spam and abuse, and will do what we can to assist.
Can I prevent "Guest" from posting in my Cbox?
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... ?>
Can I create moderators or administrators?
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.