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.

If you are a Cbox administrator or owner then you can delete users' data via the control panel. In particular, you can delete messages permanently at here and remove registered user names here.

If you are a Cbox user then you can request the owner or administrator of the Cbox that you have participated in to remove your data.

You can also request a manual data deletion by contacting us, including a reference to your account. We may require that you provide additional information to authenticate you as the account owner.

Paid Cboxes support Facebook authentication for user registration. You can enable this option at your Users page.

Facebook authentication makes it easy for users to register their names with your Cbox, because they do not have to enter or remember a separate password for Cbox. They tap the "profile" link and then the "Log in with Facebook" button. If they are already logged in with Facebook and have previously accepted the Cbox app connection, then they will be logged in without any further prompt.

Facebook authentication also makes it easier for you to control access to your Cbox, because bans against Facebook users will apply to their Facebook identity, not just their name or IP on your Cbox.

Cbox does not use its Facebook integration to post to users' feeds; we only ask permission to retrieve the user's name and email address, as well as basic public information that all Facebook apps receive. We may set the user's avatar on your Cbox to their Facebook profile picture by default, but they are free to change this.

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;
}
?>

By default, Cboxes embedded on MyLeague.com are integrated with your MyLeague userbase. This disables the "name" and "email / url" boxes on your Cbox, and automatically assigns usernames and avatars to members who are signed in on MyLeague. Non-members and members who have not signed in are given the name "Guest."

If you would prefer to use Cbox's built-in user features, so that your visitors must specify their names themselves, you can do that by choosing a different Cbox code variation — choose "Inline (default)". Then a new embed code will appear, which you will need to copy-and-paste over your old Cbox code in your MyLeague page.

Then Save and refresh your page and you should see the "name" box on your Cbox. You will now have access to all User and Access Control features.

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.