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.

This is the message that shows when your Cbox is accessed from an address other than the one specified at your Publish page, when you have the option "Allow access only at this address" enabled.

A common reason for this to happen is that you have entered an address that is more specific than it needs to be — for example, including the "www." at the beginning when your visitors don't need to include that to reach your website. Most of the time "mysite.com" works just as well as "www.mysite.com", but if you have specified "www.mysite.com" as the only address to allow access at, then Cbox will show an error when you arrive at your site via "mysite.com".

The solution is to simplify the address so it covers all the legitimate routes to your page, or turn off the option "Allow access only at this address."

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.

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.

Yes. This will work if they are different Cboxes. If you want to show the same Cbox more than once on the page, you will need to make a small change to the embed code for each additional embed.

In your Cbox embed code you will see something like name="cboxmainA-123456" id="cboxmainA-123456" — this uniquely identifies the Cbox so that its frames can communicate with each other. The A-123456 part appears four times in total in the standard embed code. Edit it, simply adding a dash and a serial number, to make it A-123456-2, for example.

When you renew your service with us, your paid term is extended by the additional time that you purchase, regardless of the remaining credit. This means you never lose any time. For example, if your term ends on 21 September, but you renew early, purchasing 12 months in July, then your term is extended to 21 September next year.

Upgrading Premium to Pro

When you upgrade from Premium to Pro, your credit is reset for the new plan. Remaining Premium credit is however held on your account, and if you have sufficient credit, you can contact us to request a pro-rated conversion after your upgrade.