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.
I lost my Cbox embed code. Where can I get it?
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.
How do I put my Cbox on my website?
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.
How do change my Cbox's style to go with my site's design?
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.
How do I delete messages?
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.
Can I make my Cbox transparent?
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.
Where can I change my password?
You can change your Cbox account control panel password at the Account details section of your control panel.
If you can't remember your current password you can request a new one at this page.
To change the password of a registered name on your Cbox, you will need to delete the registered name in question at the Users page of your control panel, and then re-register the user or allow the user to register again.
Using the Cbox webhook
Getting started
This feature requires some familiarity with hosting your own scripts on the Web. Our code examples are in PHP, but you can use any platform and programming language you like, providing you can access HTTP POST data.
The Cbox webhook is an HTTP POST callback mechanism for getting a copy of new messages as they are posted to your Cbox. A couple of lines of PHP are sufficient to get started:
<?php $input = @file_get_contents("php://input"); $json = json_decode($input); // $json contains array of messages error_log(print_r($json, true), 1, "your-email@example.com"); echo "OK"; ?>
With the above code uploaded to your server, test that it works by opening the corresponding URL, e.g. https://yoursite.example.com/cbox.php, and confirming that you see "OK". You can then enter it as your callback URL in your Cbox settings.
When a user posts a message, Cbox will issue an HTTP POST
request to your callback URL,
with Content-Type application/json
. The request body will look something like this:
[{"type":"message","box":802140,"channel":0,"time":1488526982,"uid":0,"name":"test","text":"this is a test","link":"","ip":"0.0.0.0"}]
The object is an array of messages. There can be multiple messages in a single POST. Your code can do whatever you like with the messages; it just needs to return an HTTP OK status to Cbox. Any response body is ignored.
Message contents
The message webhook is located after the message-accepted stage and before filtering. This means your endpoint will only receive messages that are being published on your Cbox (i.e. not messages from banned users). They will be "raw", having none of the built-in or custom filters applied (i.e. no boxcode expansion). Important to note is that messages can contain any UTF-8 character, and so should be escaped as appropriate before storage or display.
Message properties:
type
— always set to "message"box
— your Cbox ID.channel
— The channel ID to which the message was posted.id
— The message ID.time
— Unix times when the message was received.uid
— Registered user ID. Guest IDs are undefined or zero.name
— The user's name, as entered.text
— The text of the message, as entered.link
— Link associated with the message; the profile URL.ip
— IP address of the user.
Errors and retry
Your endpoint needs to return an HTTP success header (status codes in the 2XX
range) in response to the POST.
If it returns any other status, or times out, Cbox will consider the delivery to have failed. On failure, Cbox will buffer messages for
retry. Cbox will retry the POST at increasingly long intervals, even in the absence of further new messages.
Cbox buffers are not unlimited; if your endpoint is down for an extended time, the oldest messages may be dropped.
Notes
- Cbox ignores the body sent in response to the POST, and does not wait for it to complete.
- Return a
200 OK
to Cbox as quickly as possible. Otherwise, there is a risk of a timeout, which will cause the same message(s) to be re-sent. If your message processing is slow, move it "offline", either by completing and flushing the HTTP response early and continuing to work, or by offloading incoming messages to another service. - For forwards-compatibility, confirm that
type == 'message'
in your code; new event types may be supported in future. - The box and channel properties mean you can multiplex several Cboxes to a single endpoint, and filter or switch based on channel.
- Message ID is a monotonically increasing number. Larger IDs are always newer messages.
- Although some properties are 32-bit integers, it's recommended that you treat all values as UTF-8 strings for storage or further processing.
- The POST request includes a custom HTTP header,
X-Cbox-Time
which contains the Unix timestamp at the moment the POST was sent. You can use this to calculate differential message times.
The Quick Link page has an error saying "Not Found" or "Invalid Quick Link"
Check that your Quick Link is enabled at your Publish page, and confirm that you have the correct URL for it.
What are the emoticon / filter limits?
Because emoticons and filtering rules require additional message processing time, we have a limit on the number that can be defined per Cbox. The limits vary by plan and you can upgrade if you need to increase them.
If you later downgrade your plan, your limits will be reduced but we will not automatically delete any of your data.
Is Cbox free?
We have a free plan, which will always be free, but it does not offer the full complement of features available with Cbox. Our paid plans come with plenty of good reasons to upgrade.