Building a Web Site For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Providing Guestbooks

Guestbooks are the digital equivalent of a graffiti wall, which doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to contain limericks or dirty words. But they are designed so that people can leave short messages for all to see.

Many guestbooks offer an additional option that allows users to create messages that only the guestbook owner — the Webmaster — can view. This enables people to leave private comments for you.

The guestbook stacks the posted messages one after the other, with the vast majority of guestbooks putting the newest message on top and moving all the others down. A few guestbooks work the other way around, but I don’t recommend that type because you have to scroll too much to get to the most recent message.

You may want to use a couple of e-mail features built in to most guest books:

✓	Thank-you note: This feature sends a nice note to each visitor who leaves a message.
✓	Message copies via e-mail: This feature e-mails the Webmaster a copy of each message posted. This is a nice timesaver; otherwise, you have to constantly go to the guestbook to see what new messages have been posted.

GuestCity (www.guestcity.com) is one of the easiest guestbooks in the world to set up. It’s free, and the only catch is that an unobtrusive advertising banner appears at the top of your Web page. GuestCity remotely hosts the guestbook on its site, so you don’t have to have ...