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.

You can generate message archives at your control panel. These are records of the conversation in your Cbox including messages that were subsequently deleted or purged.

The format is tab-separated CSV, so you will be able to import the file into a spreadsheet or database system.

It's not currently possible to import message archives back into Cbox.

Your security online is important to us. Please consider these guidelines for choosing a secure password:

• Avoid words which appear in the dictionary.
• A longer password is generally better.
• Mix uppercase letters, numbers, and other special characters into your password.
• Your password should not easily be associated with you – don't use your name or birthdate in your password.

Cbox will send you a password reset email if you ever forget your password here. This means that your email account must be at least as secure as your Cbox account. Do not use the same password for Cbox that you use for your email account. This is good practice generally: it is common for Internet services to send password reset emails to your email address. If any one of them is compromised, the risk is limited to that account only if your passwords are different.

A good tip for choosing a strong password: start with a memorable sentence. Then take the first letter from each word in the sentence to make your password. Use a mix of upper- and lower-case letters and use a number or other non-alphabetic character as a substitute for at least one letter.

You can downgrade from Pro to Premium at your control panel. Your Pro features will be disabled automatically.

If you let your Premium plan lapse, it will not automatically revert to a Free Cbox. Your messages and settings will be saved but your Cbox will be locked. You will be able to renew at any time reactivate it. To get back on the Free plan, simply sign up for a new Cbox, using a new Cbox name.

If our service is not meeting your expectations on any plan, please contact us and we will do what we can to improve your experience.

You need to have cookies enabled in your browser in order to use the control panel. Your browser may be configured not to accept cookies, or it may be in a "private browsing" mode, or you may have a plugin or extension that is restricting them. Test in another browser if possible.

At its simplest, the Custom filter is a list of words that you want hidden or replaced in your Cbox. Enter words, one per line, and if a user's name or message contains that word, it will be filtered out.

badword
badderword:betterword

When a message is applied to the above filter, "badword" will be turned into asterisks, and "badderword" will be replaced by "betterword". The ":" (colon) character separates the pattern text from the replacement text. If the colon is left out, the entire line is the word to match.

Filters can be useful for more interesting things too, however.

Styling and aliasing names

You can set colours for admins, mods and registered users on your Themes page, but you can create individualized filters for particular names or words you want to highlight.

jacob:[color=green]TheRealJacob[/color]

This user would still enter "jacob" as his name in your Cbox, but whenever he posts, or whenever someone mentions him in a message, the output will be TheRealJacob, in green.

If you want to apply style besides colour to names, you can use the [class] boxcode.

jacob:[class=vip]{$0}[/vip]

You will then need to define your custom CSS for this class.

Using and disabling boxcode

Boxcode itself can be customised, making the combination of filtering and formatting very powerful. See more.

Your custom filtering rules support boxcode, as seen in the example above, even if you have boxcode disabled for messages in your Settings. You can also match the boxcode that people use (or attempt to use) in their messages.

![br]:/
haiku:The moment two bubbles[br]are united, they both vanish.[br]A lotus blooms.

The first rule will match "[br]" appearing in messages, and replace it with a slash. But the [br]s that appear in the second rule will still work, creating line breaks, because each replacement string is boxcode-filtered independently.

If boxcode is enabled for messages, then you can create aliases and compound boxcode using partial (open) tags:

![red]:[color=#f00][b]
![/red]:[/b][/color]

When a user enters [red]this is red[/red], the filter translates this to [color=#f00][b]this is red[/b][/color], which is now valid boxcode, and will in turn become HTML.

Substring matching

Normal filter patterns are considered to be "words". A word is matched only if it's not surrounded by other letters. A pattern that begins with the prefix "!" (exclamation mark) will be treated as a substring, not a word: it can be matched anywhere.

plane:hockey
!color:colour

In this example, the first rule will match "plane", but not "airplane" or "planet". The second rule will match "color" as well as "colorful" and will replace them with "colour" and "colourful" respectively. Substring matching is generally important if you're creating aliases for boxcodes.

Filter order

Names and messages are filtered first by your custom filter. Messages are then parsed for smilies, boxcode, and links, in that order, if you have these features enabled. Names do not have these built-in filters applied.

Within your custom filter itself, the order of rule-matching is from top to bottom.

hi:hello
hello:goodbye

If a user posts "hi!", then as the message passes through the above rules it will be translated first to "hello!", and then, because it now matches the second rule, it becomes "goodbye!". In general, whenever a rule matches something that appears in another rule's replacement text, the order matters, and earlier rules can influence the effect of later ones. It's not recommended to depend on this behaviour, however. To create internal shortcuts, use variables.

Variables

A line beginning with a "$" (dollar sign) defines a variable that you can use in subsequent replacement text:

$pre:[big][color=#ff0000]
$suf:[/big][/color]
jane:{$pre}Jane{$suf}
john:{$pre}{$0}{$suf}

The first two lines do not match name or message text: they define variables representing the strings following the colon. Variables are written in to the replacement string by surrounding them with braces. Substitution is completed before match replacement and boxcode filtering. The variable $0 is special: it contains the text that matched.