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Guestbook on the website

Last updated on July 13, 2009 at 12:36 pm

Would you like to have a guestbook on your band website or personal homepage? You can allow your visitors to write into the guestbook and even make list of customers' compliments from the module if you like.

Features of module Guestbook

Filter and replace "bad" words with your own black list
Easy integrate with Smiley or Captcha module
Limit number of characters can be entered per post
Moderate messages before display on the website
Spam protection with minimal time span between posts (in seconds)
E-mail notification to website administrator if a new post has been submitted
The posts are searchable with Search module

Live guestbooks made with CMS Made Simple

To install the module In the admin panel select Extensions → Module Manager and choose on the tab "Available modules" the letter "G" above the alphabetical module list. Find Guestbook and click on "Download & Install". The module is successfully installed and can be used now.

There are two ways to add Guestbook on the your website. The first one is to use a special content page installed with the module. This way is easier, you do not have to use any tags in this case and make all your settings on the page itself. Go to admin panel in Content → Pages and click on "Add New Content". Select "Guestbook" as Content type!

Guestbook content type

Set the settings on the page according to your needs and save the page. The guestbook is ready to use.

However in this case you are going to loose a lot of control on the page. The layout control and the tab "Options" are hidden on the page so that you can not make any individual changes on the page layout. If you need options you have with normal content pages then you choose another way to add guestbook to the website.

Go to admin panel and select Content → Pages. Click on "Add New Content" and leave the content type of the page as is. Fill in title of the page and menu text and and add

{cms_module module="Guestbook"}

into the "Content" field. Save the page. You have nearly the same result as you had using the first way, but now you have full control on your page settings. Nevertheless you can also control your guestbook with parameters:

textleng="1000" - sets how many characters can be entered per post. The default is 1000 characters.
number="10" - maximum number of entries shown on a page. If there are more entries the pagination is created automatically.
timespan="0" - minimal time spanin seconds between posts (spam protection)
sortasc="0" - Sort guestbook items in ascending date order (new posts will go to the end)
shownow="0" - Shows messages right after submission, without approval by moderator (not recommended!)
smiley="0" - translate text-based smileys to image smileys and shows the smiley table on the entry submit form. Module Smiley hast to be installed.
captcha="0" - this will enable captcha on the guestbook entry form. Module Captcha must be installed.
showaddform="0" - shows the insert form on the first page. Replaces the "New Guestbook Entry" button.
mailnoti="" - e-mail address to send a notification to if a message was submitted. The CMSMailer module will be used for sending the e-mail if it is installed (otherwise PHP's mail function is used).

You can mix all this parameter to refine the output of the guestbook. The order of the parameters is not important. For example:{cms_module module="Guestbook" mailnoti="me@mydomain.com" showaddform="1" captcha="1"}

This line will display the entry form on the first page of your guestbook (showaddform); you will get a notification if new post is submitted (mailnoti); module Captcha should be used in the form (captcha).

To test create a new post, check if you have received notification about new entry per e-mail and go to the admin panel. Select Content → Guestbook. In the tab "Manage Guestbook Entries" all messages entered are displayed. But only the active messages are shown on the site. See the column "Active" in the message list. You can activate the message with click on red cross beside the post.

Style and design

With the module additional stylesheet "Guestbook (default/example stylesheet)" is installed. If you would like to use the default style go to Content → Pages and click on the template name in the column "Template" beside your "Guestbook" page. The template is opened. Click on the blue CSS icon beside the button "Apply" to attach a form style. On the next page choose "Guestbook (default/example stylesheet)" from the drop-down field and click on "Add a stylesheet". The style is now added to the list of stylesheets that are associated with this template.

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Alina

July 12, 2009 at 12:40 am

I have added the guestbook on my website and had 2 comments within 20 minutes. It is just what my friends needed to say what they think about :)
M. Nemcek

February 18, 2010 at 10:58 am

Hallo,
is any way to make field with required email in guestbook?

thanks