Installation

You need a store on a platform Softbox supports, and an account on that store with permission to create API credentials — the owner, or a staff account whose role includes managing apps or API accounts. Everything else happens in Softbox.

There is no plugin, no theme edit and no script to paste. Softbox talks to your store over its own API, so nothing is installed into your storefront and nothing about your shop changes until you publish a photograph yourself.

1. Open the sign-up page and choose how to sign in: an email address and password, your Google account, or the store platform itself.
2. If you are using a password, pick one of at least eight characters. Softbox never sees it — it is held by Google Firebase Authentication, which tells us only whether a sign-in succeeded.
3. Accept the terms and create the account. The free plan needs no card, and you land on the dashboard with tokens already on the balance.

The welcome email is a courtesy, not a step: the account works the moment it is created, whether or not the email arrives.

Open Connections in the sidebar. Every platform Softbox knows about is listed, each card saying whether it can be connected today or is still being verified. The ⓘ on a card opens the same steps you are reading here.

Connecting is always the same shape: you create a credential inside your own store, paste it into Softbox, and Softbox checks it against the platform before saving. A credential the platform rejects is never stored, so a typo costs you a second attempt rather than a connection that looks fine and is not.

Softbox reads your products and writes finished photographs back to them. You create an API account in your BigCommerce control panel and paste two values into Softbox.

1. Sign in to your BigCommerce control panel.
2. Look at the address bar. The part after /stores/ is your store hash — in store-abc123def.mybigcommerce.com it is abc123def. Copy it.
3. In the left menu open Settings, then under API choose Store-level API accounts.
4. Select Create API account, choose the V2/V3 API token type, and name it something you will recognise later — Softbox.
5. Under OAuth scopes set Products to Modify, and Information & Settings to Read-only. Leave everything else on None.
6. Select Save. BigCommerce shows the token once and downloads a text file — copy the Access Token value out of it.
7. Back in Softbox, paste the store hash and the access token, and select Connect.

Softbox connects through a custom app you create in your own Shopify admin, which issues an access token scoped to products alone.

1. Sign in to your Shopify admin.
2. Open Settings, then Apps and sales channels, then Develop apps.
3. Select Create an app, name it Softbox, and create it.
4. Open Configuration, then Admin API integration, and select Configure.
5. Tick read_products and write_products. Nothing else is needed.
6. Save, open the API credentials tab, and select Install app.
7. Reveal the Admin API access token and copy it.
8. In Softbox enter your shop domain — the one ending in .myshopify.com — and paste the token.

WooCommerce and Etsy appear on the Connections screen marked as coming soon. Both integrations are written, but neither has been run against a real shop yet, so the cards are visible and cannot be connected — you can see where Softbox is going without anyone trusting an unverified integration with their catalogue.

If your shop is on one of those, or on Wix, Salla, Zid, Tiendanube, Squarespace or Ecwid, write to info@codinative.com and say which. Knowing a real shop is waiting is what moves one of them up the list.

Two permissions on BigCommerce, two on Shopify, and nothing else. Softbox asks for products and for the shop’s name — not customers, not orders, not payments.

• Products, read and write. Reading is how Softbox lists what you sell and finds the photograph a garment is fitted from. Writing is how a finished photograph gets attached to the right product.
• Store information, read only. Used once, when you connect, to confirm the token belongs to your store and to show its name on the card. On Shopify this comes with the token rather than as a separate scope.

Nothing is written to your store until you press Go live on a shot you kept. The write permission is asked for at connection time because asking for it later would mean making you do all of this again.

Encrypted field by field through Google Cloud KMS before it reaches the database, so the record stays readable and the secret in it does not. A stored token leaves our servers exactly once: when it is sent to the platform it belongs to.

Softbox never shows a secret back — not even to you. The Connections screen can say that a token is stored and whether it still works, and that is all it can say. Editing a connection and leaving a secret field blank keeps the stored value rather than erasing it, so you can correct a shop domain without re-pasting a token.

Disconnecting deletes the credential. Your models, backgrounds and generated photographs are untouched: unlinking a store is not a request to destroy your work.

1. The connection’s card should show your store’s name. That name came back from the platform, so seeing it means your actual shop accepted the token.
2. Open Products. Everything you sell, from every connected store, is listed together. A populated list means reading works.
3. Follow the user guide to make a model and shoot one product. Publishing that first photograph is what proves writing works, and it is the only part of this that touches your storefront.

• The token was rejected. Softbox checks a credential against the platform before saving, so this is the platform saying no — usually a typo in the store hash or shop domain, or a scope left on None. Check the scopes before going to the trouble of making a new token.
• It worked, and now the card says there is a problem. Tokens get revoked without anyone being told: a deleted API account, a staff member removed, a permission narrowed. Softbox re-checks stored connections and flags one that has stopped working, so this means issue a new token and update the connection.
• Products are missing. Softbox lists what the platform returns for the scope it was given. A product the API hides — unpublished, or outside the channel that token can see — will not appear.
• A published photograph has not appeared on the listing. Give the store a minute: most platforms process an image upload in the background, and some add new images to the end of the gallery rather than the front.

Anything else, write to info@codinative.com with the platform and what the screen said. The help page covers the problems that come up before a store is connected at all.