I'm getting ready to set up my first site (virtually hosted) and am looking for the best guestbook software out there. Obviously, what's 'best' depends largely on my needs. I want a single, straightfoward guestbook.

The best ones I've found so far are 4CM_GuestbookPro:

http://www.4cm.com/guestbookpro/

...and DCGuest:

http://www.dcscripts.com/dcguest.shtml

I was favoring 4CM because it seemed to aesthetically match my chosen bulletin board software (vBulletin), especially with its icons and all. However, when I go to the demo page...

http://www.4cm.com/guestbookpro/demo/index.php?action=view&view=0

...and click any 'Email:' icon, I get, for example, an e-mail addressed to:

kooldood2002_at_hotmail_dot_com

...instead of...

kooldood2002@hotmail.com

Hardly encouraging. I randomly checked some other 4CM boards, and they all did the same thing.

Also, it's supposed to word-wrap extra long words, instead of just scrolling them off the screen, but when I tested this (see my 'Bill Boogie' post on the demo page), it cut off the first part of the long words instead of just wrapping them.

Finally, I want to be able to change the font.

So...can I (1)manually fix the e-mail format, (2)fix the word-wrap, and (3)change the font? I'm going to contact 4CM but figured it couldn't hurt to ask here either.


As far as DCGuest goes...I'm going to post this question on DCSripts' board also...but...does anybody know if I turn off DCGuest's thank-you e-mail feature? I'd say most likely 'yes'.

Also, DCGuest's word-trim feature apparently isn't working...

http://www.dcscripts.com/dcforum/dcguest/259.html

...and I'd really like a guestbook that can prevent off-screen scrolling of extra long words.

If anybody can recommend any other guestbook software out there, please do so.

Thanks,
'tog'

Well, you have listed most so I would suggest that you visit: http://www.cgi-resources.com where there are lots of guestbook scripts that may meet you requirements.

A word of caution on the pros & cons of having it on your site.

1)Make sure that it has a filtering features for profanity words.

2)You can edit/delete, as you don't want to have unwanted and negative comments working against you or your site.

3)Have some kind of protection as you don't want someone to spam you with thousands of it and jammed up your server resources causing your host to kick you off their server.

Just my advice and hope it helps

You might check out
http://site.ugbdev.net/
It offers UGB, Ultimate Guestbook, for download and several hacks. UGB is a product of Infopop, and is free to use.....

I went ahead and set up DCGuest. It's working out very well. But thanks for the replies. I'll try out that UGB someday. Looks cool.