Guestbook Tutorials

February 4, 2005 10:47 AM

Could you recommend a good guestbook tutorial? I’ve seen the problems with hosted guestbooks (server downtime, data erased without warning) and I’d like to learn how to build my own. I would like my guestbook to be configurable with CSS and as simple as possible.
posted by Termite to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

It's not clear (to me) what you mean by a guestbook tutorial. It sounds like you want to program your own, so maybe what you want is a way to learn a web-enabled programming language and possible how to deal with files or databases? That is, building a guestbook is just a special case of building pretty much any web-enabled application.

Maybe you already know a programming language and are trying to figure out what sort of "components" or pieces a guestbook might be composed of?
posted by RustyBrooks at 12:10 PM on February 4, 2005

It's not clear to me either.

If you want to learn a programming language, tell us what platform and what operating system you're working with and we could probably point you at a general tutorial for programming in that language.

As a solution to your problem of wanting to host your own, configurable guestbook, head on over to freshmeat.net and search for "guestbook". There are 47 projects found, and I'd guess more than one would fit your needs.
posted by cactus at 12:31 PM on February 4, 2005

Why would you code your own guestbook? Hundreds of people already did that. Just look for one you like.
posted by reynaert at 12:34 PM on February 4, 2005

Response by poster: Sorry if my question was unclear. What I'm looking for is just a very simple tutorial, like "make one php file like this and one html file like this and you get this result". I don't know any programming language and I'm not going to learn one just for a guestbook. I posted this question because I had been googling for a guestbook and almost given up: all the links I found led to things that were not useful for me.

Reynaert: I will check that link out. Maybe that's just what I asked for.
posted by Termite at 1:06 PM on February 4, 2005

Yeah it sounds like you're looking for some existing guest book program. There are tons of them. Fresh meat is as good a place to start as any, though do note that there is little if any quality control, anyone who wants to can submit their program to freshmeat.
posted by RustyBrooks at 1:52 PM on February 4, 2005

I use Megabook as the guestbook on my personal website and I have been very happy with it. It's simple but fairly flexible. Mine is pretty minimalist but you can do more with it.

All you need is to be able to upload it into the cgi-bin path on your sever and setup + customization is painless.
posted by moxyberry at 2:17 PM on February 4, 2005