Why Community Box doesn't work with website builders that use iframe
What is an iframe?
An iframe (short for inline frame) is a way of embedding one website inside another using code. For example, here's the Community Box website embedded using an iframe:
It's like a window into the Community Box website. If anything changes on the Community Box website, you'd see the changes reflected here.
Some website builders (such as GoDaddy) use iframes as a very basic way to embed content. Others offer more modern ways to embed content, but may use iframes as the default.
The problem with iframes
Because iframes are intended for embedding whole websites inside other websites, it comes with a lot of restrictions for security issues:
- contents of an iframe can't interact with other elements of the page, which restricts some of the directory features (such as the map)
- code inside an iframe has no access to information about what domain the website is currently running on (which would make it easy for someone else to embed your directory on their site)
- because an iframe is loading a whole website, it can make any pages that use iframes much slower
- iframes aren't responsive, which means it's hard to make them look good on both mobile and desktop layouts
- iframes also come with accessibility issues
For these reasons, Community Box will not run inside an iframe.
The solution
Most website builders offer different ways of embedding code. If you contact your website builder's support team, they should be able to advise you how to do this. We've provided an example message below:
''I need to embed some custom HTML on my page. This HTML cannot be contained in an iframe element. Please let me know how to embed custom HTML outside of an iframe element.”
If you get stuck or your website builder's support team aren't able to help, you can always reach out to us at help@communitybox.co and we'll do our best to get you up and running.