The New quickbox.io: A Rebuilt Dashboard, stackU, and Easier Docs

The whole QuickBox platform now lives in one place: quickbox.io. The site you sign in to has been rebuilt, there is a new way to learn QuickBox and get rewarded for it, the docs read better, and a QuickBox Pro update lands next week. Here is the tour.

Sign in and you land on a page that answers the usual questions before you ask them. Across the top is one row of five readouts, and each one is a link to the page behind it:

• ●Licenses: how many are active, and which are lifetime or monthly.
• ●Servers: used out of allowed, how many are online, how many slots are free.
• ●API keys: how many you have and when one was last used.
• ●Renews: your next renewal date, whether auto-renew is on, and whether it runs through Stripe or PayPal.
• ●Points: your Rewards balance and how far you are from the next tier.

If something needs you, a short list appears under the row: a failed payment, billing setup that is not finished, a license ending within 14 days with no auto-renew, an unverified email, or no two-factor on your account. It shows three items at most, and when there is nothing to flag it takes up no room at all.

Below that you get your licenses, your stackU progress, Rewards, your badges and roles, and a row with what's new and a docs search (press / to jump to it).

The pages behind the readouts got the same treatment. Licenses and API keys share one page now. Your servers sit in a table with name, IP, OS, version, user count, status and last seen. A server shows as offline once it has been silent for seven minutes. If you need to regenerate a key, remember that it replaces the old one at once, so your servers only keep working after they get the new key.

Invoices live under Billing > Invoices, next to Orders and Payment methods. Every invoice and payment receipt is there, and you can open one to print it, download a PDF, or pay what is due.

stackU is a learning path built straight from the docs. Every challenge comes from one docs page. You read it, then either pass a short quiz (four questions, three to pass) or do a quick check on your own account. Finish a level's challenges and you can sit that level's exam: 15 questions, 12 to pass, two attempts per rolling seven days.

Level 101, Foundations, is open now. It has 12 challenges in three groups: learn the basics, hands-on, and join the community. Nine are docs quizzes. The other three check real things: that your server is activated, that you turned on two-factor or added a passkey, and that you linked your Discord account.

Passing the 101 exam pays 225 Rewards points and a badge. Points are worth one US cent each, and the whole path pays 1,500 points once you finish it, so this is a nice bonus for knowing your stuff, not a side hustle. Challenges themselves pay nothing; the exam is what counts.

The rest of the ladder is mapped out: 201 Operate, 301 Tune, 401 Administer, and then QB University, a 25-question capstone across every level. Those are not open yet, and each new level opens at least seven days after you finish the one before it.

Two things worth knowing. Anyone with a QuickBox account can take part and your progress is always saved, but points are released while your account has an active license. If you finish a level without one, your points wait, and a Claim button appears once you have a license. And the leaderboard is opt-in, off by default. Nobody appears on it until they switch it on, and switching it off removes you right away. The public board is at quickbox.io/stacku.

You told us the docs could read better, so we reworked how they look and move. The goal was a calmer page and faster answers.

• ●A sidebar grouped into Start, Reference and Help, with the contents of the page you are on in a rail beside it.
• ●Search in the top bar.
• ●A copy button on every code block, and paths, ports and URLs that are a single value now show as highlights you can copy in one click.
• ●Warnings and notes as colour-banded alerts you will not miss.
• ●One table style everywhere, tables that fit on a phone, and on Getting Started, clear cards showing which distributions are supported and which are end of life.

Start at the docs.

The classic quickbox.io site is retired, and all of it now runs on the new quickbox.io: sign in, dashboard, pricing, articles, docs. If you have an old link to v3.quickbox.io saved, it forwards to the same page on quickbox.io. If you missed the story of how your account moved, it is in Goodbye, quickbox.io. That post went up just before the whole platform moved onto the quickbox.io address, so wherever it says v3.quickbox.io, read quickbox.io.

An update for QuickBox Pro is coming next week. I do not have a version number for you yet, and the release notes will be the final word on what is in it. Most of the work is under the hood, security and efficiency. These are the pieces I would point at.

1. Accounts on a shared server are closed off from each other. App config folders now start at a mode that other accounts cannot enter, /opt/<account> is closed to other accounts (the update applies this to every existing account), and the settings files that hold secrets, such as the qBittorrent and Ombi configs, are no longer readable by everyone. Backup copies the dashboard makes are owner-only too.
2. More apps sit behind nginx only. Ombi, Duplicati, Komga, Requestrr, SeedCross and the Transmission web UI now listen on loopback, so their ports stop answering from the network. noVNC no longer uses a shared TLS key and asks for your login on its websocket path as well. Each Dispatcharr instance now keeps its own database and Redis private to its owner.
3. An unreachable GitHub no longer breaks an update. Dispatcharr, Audiobookshelf, Calibre, Medusa and Seerr fetch first with a time limit and stop before changing anything if GitHub does not answer. If a checkout fails partway, the old install is put back, started again, and no version is recorded.
4. Builds on your server cannot eat all its memory. Seerr, The Lounge, Audiobookshelf and Dispatcharr builds now run with a memory cap sized from measured installs, and a build is refused up front, with the memory it needs named, if the server does not have enough.
5. A better Download Activity panel. It is now a dense table of your download clients with search, state filters, 25, 50 or 100 rows per page and pagination, and each client shows where it keeps its data and where finished downloads land. A client that stalls keeps showing its last good data, labelled with its age, for up to five minutes instead of vanishing.
6. More for admins. The restricted shell's allowed folders can be added and edited from the dashboard, and folder scans in Storage now run as low-priority background jobs, with no time limit, and an admin can scan / to count every disk.

If you run into anything on the new site or after the update, come find us on Discord. Our staff is there and happy to help. Thank you for sticking with QuickBox.