GENCMP-L Archives

From: Sophelyn< >
Subject: Re: Guestbook: Pro & Con?
Date: Thu, 01 Apr 1999 18:39:58 GMT

On Thu, 1 Apr 1999 16:26:17 GMT, wrote:

> I'm interested in the pros and cons of adding a guestbook to my
> genealogy Web site. So far, I only have some pros -- primarily,
> enticing shy visitors to say 'hi.' Is there a downside?

Perhaps. There are people out there who seek out guestbooks just to
sign them. This is not necessarily bad, but people are sometimes
tempted to write "nasty" things and some are clever at getting past
"bad word" filters. Yet for a personal site I think it is harmless
fun. For a commercial site I always advise against it. There is
always some disgruntled person who will jump at a chance to rant
publicly.

> What's your experience with visitor guestbooks?

That the (harmless) novelty generally wears off. :) Then you are left
wondering if you should have this page full of people saying, "Hi.
Cool Site. Bye" from a couple of months ago. But if you have fun
with it, that's all that matters, right? And some guestbooks do stay
hopping.

> And do you have a recommendation?

I like Matt Wright's guestbook script. (Uh, forget the URL but just
search for "Matt's Script Archive" if you don't know it already.)
It's in perl and free. On his site he has a link to what I think is
cgi-resources.com (or something similar) and they have a really
wonderful database of cgi scripts, many publicly available. I mostly
stick to the Perl part, where I believe there is a guestbook section.
Worth a visit!

Soph, "Just Surfed On In!"

This thread:

• Re: Guestbook: Pro & Con? by Sophelyn< >