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.

We don't automatically throttle or curtail access to Cboxes that go over their hits or messages per day limits.

However, our resources are shared between all customers. During high demand, Cboxes which have high concurrency (users online) may experience temporary interruptions or unavailability.

For this reason, we advise that if your Cbox consistently exceeds the daily views/messages thresholds, you upgrade to a plan with higher capacity, or contact us if you are unsure of your requirements.

Your Cbox is also limited in the total number of messages it can store. When you reach this limit, the oldest messages are removed from the public history. If you have a paid plan, you can still retrieve messages up to three months old via your archive page.

You can change your Cbox's size on the Layout page of your control panel. Simply change the values for width and height, and then save your changes. You will then be informed that your code has been updated — go to your Publish page to get your new code, to reinstall your Cbox on your website.

If the message input area in your Cbox looks wrong, or cut off, you may need to increase the "Form height" setting, also at your Layout page.

Your Cbox does not in fact have to be a fixed size. You can edit your embed code directly to introduce relative widths and heights.

There are a number of factors that can account for a difference in the number of users shown as online, even if your tracker code is placed on exactly the same pages as your Cbox.

One reason for count inaccuracy is that it's often impossible to get positive confirmation that a visitor has left the page. Cbox applies a fixed timeout of three minutes to each session, after which the user is considered offline. A tracker with a longer timeout may show a larger number of visitors online. Cbox also does not require a user to keep interacting to be considered online (they will be marked as idle instead). A tracker that shows only active users may have a lower count.

Cbox counts users differently depending depending on whether they are named or not. A named user in general is one who has previously interacted with your Cbox, for example by posting a message in it. All other visitors are considered to be anonymous guests. To maximize the privacy of your visitors, Cbox does not send cookies or other tracking information to anonymous visitors' browsers, and instead uses a passive IP-based method to count them. This can cause inaccuracy in the anonymous-guest component of your total. If multiple anonymous visitors share an IP address behind the same NAT device, for example, then they will be undercounted; if their IP address is changing frequently, they may be overcounted.

Recognized, named users are tracked more precisely, and will only be counted once, regardless of how many tabs or devices they are using your Cbox in.

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.

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.