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.

The option "Enable site whitelist" at your Publish page will prevent other websites from displaying your Cbox to their visitors.

When using this option, ensure the web address we have on record (also on that page) is the simplest possible address for your site. For example you should generally not include the "www." part nor any trailing path, like "/index.html".

You need some development experience to make use of this feature, with the ability to edit your site's back-end code.

Cbox Pro supports Integration, which is a way to implement single sign-on. If users already log in or register with your site, Integration means they don't have to enter their name again on your Cbox.

Configure Integration at your control panel. Example code is available there. The rest of this article deals with general concerns.

How it works

Integration is implemented using query string parameters appended to the Cbox iframe URL. The final parameter is a signature generated from the rest of the URL. You don't need any external components or callbacks, just language support for HMAC-SHA256, base64-encoding, and url-encoding.

The signature is important to secure the generated URL against tampering by the user or any other intermediary. However, most back-end platforms have built-in support for the necessary functions.

Integrating avatars and profile links

The only required parameter is nme, for the user's name, and the signature, sig. But you can also pass lnk and pic parameters to Cbox, to take advantage of name links and avatars, respectively. These should be provided as absolute URLs. For example, https://yoursite.example.com/path/to/image.gif. Note that the respective display settings need to be enabled for name links or avatars to show up.

Integrating with mod/admin permissions

Integrated users' names will be registered with Cbox automatically, if they aren't already. This means you can confer mod/admin permissions at your Users page.

You can also use Integration with Moderated chat. With Moderated mode enabled, your Integrated users by default will not have voice permission. You will be able to review their messages as a mod or admin user in your Cbox and approve them accordingly.

Security

Note that if you have existing users registered before enabling Integration, they are authenticated by Integration regardless of their password. This means if you have an existing "admin" user registered with a password on your Cbox, and you then enable Integration, the corresponding user named "admin" on your site will get that name (and permission). This can be an advantage, but if it's a risk in your case, delete all registered users before enabling Integration.

The signature in the Integrated Cbox URL protects the name and other information in transit. However, if you are concerned about leaked URLs, you can limit URL validity by passing an additional (signed) query string parameter, valid_to, which should be set to a UNIX timestamp. The URL will stop working after the time specified.

You can also change the key used to generate the signature, by changing your security tag. This invalidates all your Cbox URLs, but requires that you change your published Cbox embed code accordingly.

Debugging

If you get an error in your Cbox saying that there's a problem with Integration, the most common cause is an invalid signature.

The first thing to do is right-click and inspect the Cbox iframe URL. You should have nme=...&sig=... parameters populated in the query string. If not, check that your embed code is in place and being parsed without errors.

If the sig parameter is present in the URL, confirm that it is being generated using the correct secret key. The key is available at your Integration page.

Ensure that you are url-encoding your query string parameters exactly once, and encoding before calculating the signature. The signature itself must then also be url-encoded, and appended to the URL. If you see the sequence %25XX in the URL, that's a sign that you might be applying url-encoding to already url-encoded strings.

If you are still getting errors, contact us including the code you are using and an example URL, and we should be able to assist.

Cbox supports custom emoticons. You can add and delete emoticons at this page in your control panel.

You can control the size and other layout properties of emoticon images using CSS.

To add a new emoticon, simply click the Upload button and then select the image file, either from your device, or by pasting in a URL. Formats supported are GIF (including animated GIF), JPG, and PNG.

Each emoticon needs a shortcut code, so that users can simply type the code to insert the emoticon. This code can be anything you like, but it's recommended to use a common prefix/suffix to avoid conflicts with ordinary words in conversation. For example, :hello: will not conflict with "hello world". After clicking Save, your new emoticon(s) will be available immediately in your Cbox.

Cbox provides a Theme editor that lets you adjust colours and font sizes. With a paid plan though, you get even more flexibility with our CSS editor.

Please note: Editing CSS is an advanced feature and requires some knowledge of the language. Improperly-formed CSS can make your Cbox unusable. You can find many useful CSS resources on the Web.

Some of the things you can do with custom CSS:

• Change colours and dimensions that aren't available in the theme editor.
• Add effects such as shadows, borders, and gradients.
• Change the layout of messages by adjusting positioning.
• Create custom classes for styling names and parts of messages, in conjunction with [class] boxcode and filtering.

Getting started

The class names and IDs that we use are relatively stable. However, while we always aim to minimize disruption, it is possible — due to new features or bugfixes, for example — that we have to change HTML in ways that require updating your CSS.

We recommend using your browser's built-in development tools to assist you in finding the names of elements and classes to edit. Generally, you can right-click on an element in your Cbox, and select "Inspect".

In the new version of Cbox, the CSS you enter in your editor is appended to the base CSS. This means you do not have to copy any classes or properties that you are not editing. For example, to make avatars round, simply use:

.pic {
    border-radius: 50%;
}

Notice that the other properties, such as width and height, are not affected by this CSS. Any properties that are bound to the basic theme editor can still be edited that way. We strongly recommend this approach — rather than copying the base CSS and then editing it — for both performance and maintainability reasons.

More examples

By default a star icon appears after mod/admin names. You can change or remove that:

.msg.Adm .nme:after, .usr.Adm .nme:after,
.msg.Mod .nme:after, .usr.Mod .nme:after {
    content: '';
}

You can use the :after pseudo-element to add text as well. This puts a colon after each name:

.msg .nme:after {
    content: ':';
}

You can also change the colour of mod/admin text or messages to distinguish them:

.msg.Adm {
    background: #FFEB3B;
    color: #000;
}

The following CSS will make the name and message run together without a line-break between them:

.msg .body {
    display: inline;
}

Certain buttons in the UI can safely be removed using CSS. For example, to remove the "pop out" button:

#btnPop {
    display: none;
}

You can use CSS to create a default profile picture:

.pic.Empty {
  background: url(https://cbox.im/i/zfqhv.c100.png) no-repeat center center;
  background-size: 100%;
}

You can take advantage of CSS's cascading nature to target different rules at the same element in different contexts. For example, to show rounded avatars in the users list, but hide them completely in messages, you could use a pair of rules:

.msg .pic {
    display: none;
}
.usr .pic {
    border-radius: 50%;
}

To change or remove the maximum height that Cbox restricts your emoticons to, you can use a rule like this:

.msg .emote {
    max-height: none;
}

The following rule makes message background colours alternate:

.msg:nth-of-type(2n) {
    background: #03A9F4;
}

With CSS you can influence browser functionality as well. The following CSS prevents users from being able to select text in messages:

.msg {
    user-select: none;
}

Custom classes

You can define your own classes to be used in conjunction with filters. Filters support boxcode, so you can apply colour that way. But for more flexibility, there's a special [class] boxcode that lets you use any CSS you want.

For example, this CSS rule targets a class called cc_glow.

.cc_glow {
    text-shadow: 0px 0px 3px #E91E63;
    font-size: 120%;
}

With the above CSS, the corresponding boxcode is [class=glow][/class].

So to use your CSS, you could add a filter rule like this:

hello:[class=glow]hello[/class]

With both the CSS and the filtering rule in place, simply typing hello in your Cbox should show glowing text.

You can also override existing boxcode rather than defining your own classes:

.msg .body s {
    text-decoration: none;
    opacity: 0.5;
}

The above modifies the [s][/s] boxcode which would normally produce a strikethrough. Instead it will produce translucent text. The .msg .body selectors are there to ensure only markup in messages is targeted.

Specificity

Sometimes you might find your edits don't appear to be overriding Cbox's base CSS. This can be due to CSS Specificity rules. You may need to add specificity by including more parts in your selectors. For example, to change the colour of the smilies/emoticons button, you can use:

form#frmMain button#btnSmilies {
    color: red;
}

Notice that while the form#frmMain part might seem redundant, it increases specificity sufficiently to override Cbox's base CSS. Alternatively, you can use the !important rule to achieve the same outcome.

While !important can make customization easier, we don't recommend using it, as it increases the likelihood of unintended side-effects.

button#btnSmilies {
    color: red !important;
}

You can move your Cbox embed code around in your HTML to make your Cbox show up in a different place. You can also make it align to the centre or right side of the page, by editing the code a little.

Your code may include something like this:

position: relative; margin: 0 auto;

Remove margin: 0 auto; to eliminate the centering. You can replace it with float: left; or float: right; to make your Cbox move to the left or right, respectively.

To move it up or down on your page, you'll need to move the code to a different part of your layout. If you have access to the HTML of your page but don't know HTML, test different places to see which works best.

Other code variations may have different position methods, but can usually be edited in CSS. For example, the "fixed button" code includes inline CSS which controls its position on the page.