Free Guestbook Services
In this section, FreebieList.com takes a look at the Internet's best free guestbook services. We don't see many sites using guestbooks nowadays, but their value remains as strong as ever. If you want collect comments from your site's visitors, you could have them e-mail you. However, this can become quite time consuming and it's a definite turn off for visitors. Guestbooks, on the other hand, are far more tempting and as a result, you'll be gaining lots of valuable feedback that you can use to improve your Web site. Some of the providers here allow you to customise your guestbook to match the look and feel of your site. If you happen to stumble across an outdated link, we'd very much appreciate it if you could report it.
JibberBook - A free and modern Ajax-based guestbook service built using PHP5 and JavaScript. JibberBook is a great way to collect comments from Web site visitors and offers the flexibility and features to prevent guestbook spam or standards-breaking HTML code. Please note: you are required to download JibberBook, so it may not be entirely suitable for novices (or webmasters wishing for a more simplistic hosted solution).
123Guestbook.com - This well-designed Web site is home to a superb free guestbook service. 123Guestbook.com provides a customisable guestbook solution with a ton of different features. Via an online control panel you can edit and delete messages, set up automatic "thank you" e-mails, edit the presentation of the guestbook (e.g. your personal logo) and perform lots of other tasks.
> Unlike some other services that offer long-winded Web addresses, 123Guestbook.com provides a free sub-domain for your guestbook page (e.g. "yourname.123guestbook.com").
Guest Gear - A famous free guestbook provider, now under the control of Lycos. Guest Gear's free, advert supported guestbooks are user-friendly and allow you to collect valuable comments from visitors. They offer a range of features, including basic customisation options, e-mail notification of new entries, auto-responses to visitor entries and abusive language filters. No HTML knowledge is required.
> A small and attractive 88x31 pixel button is offered by Guest Gear. This can be placed anywhere on your site and includes both a "view guestbook" and "sign guestbook" link.
> Guest Gear has gone under a number of different guises, including "LPage" and "GuestWorld". In recent years the portal Lycos has re-branded the service as "Guest Gear", one component of the larger "HTML Gear" Webmaster site, which offers free polls, feedback forms, headline boxes, etc.
FreeGB.eu - A free and reliable guestbook provider, offering a wide range of features. This service provides Webmasters with an easy-to-remember sub- domain, resembling "yourname.freegb.eu". They also offer an online control panel, IP blocking, customisable guestbook logo, the ability to edit messages, smiley (emoticon) support, language filter, HTML code filtering and more.
Guestbook Central - A popular free guestbook service is available at Guestbook Central. They provide a range of features, including guestbook customisation with your site's colour scheme. Signing up takes literally seconds (even if you're a beginner), and their simple installation process means anyone can set up and maintain one. This service is one of our favourites, most notably for their "traditional" approach to Web guestbooks.
Freeguestbooks.net - A great free remotely hosted guestbook service that's packed with lots of useful features, including: a customisable guestbook interface, private messaging, user and IP address banning, usage of smileys (emoticons), entry editing, site rating feature, etc. Once registered, you'll have access to a control panel, where you may delete, edit and reply to entries as you wish.
GlobalGuest - GlobalGuest has been designed with simplicity and functionality in mind. Their guestbooks are simple, easy to use and do an excellent job of generating visitor feedback. We also like the way you're able to customise your guestbook during the registration process, meaning that once you've signed-up, there's little more to do than paste a snippet of HTML into your pages. This service is supported by banner adverts.
Bravenet Guestbook - Bravenet's guestbooks are ideal for adding extra interactivity to your Web site. The guestbooks offered here are customisable (so you can add your own logo, text colours and background image). And, additionally, you can administer your site via a "members area". As well as guestbooks, Bravenet also provides countless other freebie services, including free counters, URL redirection, tell a friend boxes, etc.
MilcoBook - A versatile free guestbook service, offering numerous features with no accompanying banner advertisements. MilcoBook's free guestbook allows you to fully customise the HTML coding to match that of your site's original design. It's also hosted remotely (on another server), so data transfer issues will not be a problem. To register for a free account, follow their three simple steps, and then you're all set to go.
Dream Book - Everything has been thought of in this free guestbook service. Dream Book allows you to select the fields you want to appear in the guestbook, the background and even your own welcome message. Their site has a handy help page should you need any assistance. Since this is a free service, a small 88x31 pixel button and text link will be displayed at the bottom of your guestbook pages - negligible considering the service you'll be getting.
Sparklit Guestbook - Here's another fine guestbook service from the Web tools provider, Sparklit.com. They offer a simple classic guestbook layout but also allow you to customise it with your colour scheme and logo. Alternatively, you are able to create a fresh guestbook from scratch. From what we've seen so far, they are reliable and take literally minutes to install. Once a member, you can login and maintain your guestbook from a control panel.