14 DAY TRIAL // Guestbooks are elements that add a higher degree of interactivity for a given website or web-based application. They are usually server-side applications and allow the visitors of a certain website to post various informations like name, email address, website URL, messages or comments and so on. Practically, a guestbook is different as compared with a simple contact form by making a website attractive and interactive in the same time.
When you want to implement a guestbook into your website pages, there are many stages in project planning. Guestbooks can be programmed in various server-side programming languages such as PHP, ASP.NET, JSP and can work with a flat file or a database, where the user entries will be stored. The most commonly used guestbooks are made with the PHP programming language.
The simplest PHP guestbook can contain two or three files. One of them contains a form used by visitors to post entries (comments). The form content will be stored in a database or a flat file with the help of a second PHP script. You will need one more PHP file to display the guestbook entries or the corresponding code could be introduced in the same PHP file with the code responsible for data storage and, after the visitor submit the information, the guestbook entries will be automatically displayed.
Basically, this is the functional structure of a guestbook, but depending on a certain particular situation, the guestbook could contain a pagination mechanism for displaying a constant number of entries on a page, a CAPTCHA system to prevent spam, emoticons and so on. There are guestbook scripts that, due to their complex functionality, are very close to forums as regards their features.
There are many methods to create guestbooks. For those webmasters who are new to PHP, the existing guestbooks creation tutorials are recommended for start. You just have to follow the tutorial steps and, after you make the complete application, its functionality must be correlated with the corresponding code. Another rapid method to develop your own guestbook makes use of PHP classes. In this situation you do not have to write a high amount of code (you can see a guestbook class with an implementation example here).
The usage of PHP frameworks allows the production of unique guestbooks. There are many free PHP frameworks providing examples of guestbooks applications like Yana PHP-Framework and Smarty. You will notice the increase of your website traffic if you will introduce a guestbook into your website (practically it will always be a source of new content for your website).