Guest Book

[mynameisbob]

One thing I would like to have for our website is a guestbook, but I do not know how to create a working form. I have cgi capabilities, but I do not know how to use them. I have never done cgi in my life. Does anyone have any ideas?

[Koko Ed]

Originally Posted by mynameisbob

One thing I would like to have for our website is a guestbook, but I do not know how to create a working form. I have cgi capabilities, but I do not know how to use them. I have never done cgi in my life. Does anyone have any ideas?

A word of warning: We used to have a guestbook on our website and it got spammed terribly. So be careful.

[Timothy D. Ginn]

If you're planning on writing your own, learning to use and implementing Akismet is without a doubt the best way I've encountered to virtually eliminate the automated spam posts and such. If you've used Wordpress.com that's what they've got (for me it will often catch hundreds of spam posts a month).

There's an API and documentation at http://akismet.com/development/

So, with that in mind, if you're using PHP, it's fairly easy. Take a look at http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_forms.asp for the HTML side that gives the form and on the PHP side, variables are automatically put in $_REQUEST['name']; where 'name' is whatever you called them on the form. Then you use whatever database/file method you want to store/retrieve and present them. http://www.w3schools.com/php/php_forms.asp has some PHP form samples (and, if you're using something other than PHP, you can look around on W3schools for that language, they have examples for several different possibilities)

[Compnerd]

Originally Posted by Koko Ed

A word of warning: We used to have a guestbook on our website and it got spammed terribly. So be careful.

I agree. I have had some of the same issues with many of the websites that i have designed for various people, and organizations. They are very prone to spam, and they are difficult to find ones that won't get spammed.