# Creating A Guestbook?



## Mulderator (Feb 20, 1999)

Anyone create a guestbook online? I'm using Cox Cable and they say that you can create your own guestbook by turning on the Frontpage extensions. I'd appreciate any instructions with example of a guestbook that I can put on my own web page because I don't like the one Cox provides.

PS--I don't want to use any of the free online ones because they all have the adds.


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## brendandonhu (Jul 8, 2002)

Mulder you rigged this!
I just typed a whole big message and hit Submit Reply and my response didn't show up 

Oh well, here goes the short version.
You can design the guestbook in frontpage as a form, and make it look however you want, then frontpage extensions allows you to turn it into a guestbook. Heres a tutorial:
http://www.webworkshop.org/frontpage/forms_tutorial_guestbook.htm
First make sure you have FrontPage Extensions enabled, because usually they charge a couple bucks a month to add it.

The only other way is with a server-side scripting language like CGI, ASP, or PHP. There are ad-free scripts available for those, but, your ISP will no doubt charge some $$ to get those enabled.


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## angelize56 (Apr 17, 2002)

I guess the guestbooks I use from Dreambook wouldn't be able to be used on your pages? An example of mine is  here. I know nothing about Front Page....too content using angelfire.  Ignore this if of no help!  Take care. angel


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## brendandonhu (Jul 8, 2002)

He could use DreamBook, but he doesn't want ads.
And something identical can be created in FrontPage, with no ads.


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## angelize56 (Apr 17, 2002)

Thanks Brendan.  You handle his problem you little genius you!  Take care. angel


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## brendandonhu (Jul 8, 2002)

I thought you were in his fan club 
Angel-do you use PageBuilder (or whatever angelfires is called), or write your own HTML?


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## angelize56 (Apr 17, 2002)

I use the advance editor.


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## angelize56 (Apr 17, 2002)

Oh....I'm not *in* his fan club....I *own* the fan club!  lol


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

Here ya go Molder...a little tutorial for building a guestbook in FP

http://www.at-frontpage.com/forms.htm


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## Mulderator (Feb 20, 1999)

Thanks guys, the Guestbook (basic) was easy to create in Frontpage (although it took some time to get it to work because Cox doesn't have e-mail notification working right), but now I'm looing to be able to control the formatting of the Guestbook and Frontpage's basic Guestbook doesn't do it. 

I'm thinking I probably have to send the results to a txt file, then have some code that loads it into an HTML page that I can control much easier.

Any links to code for that???

Thanks Angel for your suggestion, but I don't like the adds from the free guestbooks and I also want something that I can control myself on my web space.


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## brendandonhu (Jul 8, 2002)

What kind of formatting do you need to do with it?
I'm not sure how much front page will do for you, but you might be able to do some formatting using CSS.


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

Whatchu talkin bout Willis?? How do you mean controlling the format? Something like CSS? You can also send the results to an Access db if you want since it seems like they are running IIS servers...there are free asp based guestbooks if you look for them. Just one for your brainpan:

http://www.asp101.com/samples/guestbook.asp

YOu can modify this to look any way you like.

Webwiz also has a free one that looks pretty nice and uses either an Access97 or 200 batabase.

Guestbook:
http://www.webwizguide.info/guestbook/guestbook.asp
Sign In Page:
http://www.webwizguide.info/guestbook/sign.asp?PagePosition=1

Places for smilies and everything.


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## Mulderator (Feb 20, 1999)

I don't anything about CSS and ASP and I'm running the web on Cox's server so I'm not sure what they would have to support this stuff? Will these Guestbooks work on the Cox Server???


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

ASK THEM!! See if they support ASP, if they do then thye will work.


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## Mulderator (Feb 20, 1999)

That's not the answer I wanted Rockn. I basically wanted you to do it all for me!!!


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## brendandonhu (Jul 8, 2002)

I took a quick look at the Cox site, and found instructions for FrontPage extensions, but no mention of ASP of any other languages available.

I found some FrontPage guestbooks online, all look exactly the same. So theres probably not an obvious way to customize the looks. The guestbook is also processed server-side, and View Source just shows the HTML. I was hoping that it worked liked Blogger templates where you just move the tags like < $BlogItemBody$ > to display any way you want. I dont have front page to play around with it either.


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

That's what I thunk. Do you need someoneto do your husbandly duties as well? Did someone pass the bar for you or did you do it yourself....LOL

WHat type of page formatting are you looking for homey!!


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## Mulderator (Feb 20, 1999)

> _Originally posted by Rockn:_
> *That's what I thunk. Do you need someoneto do your husbandly duties as well? Did someone pass the bar for you or did you do it yourself....LOL
> 
> WHat type of page formatting are you looking for homey!! *


Just the basic stuff--be able to bold and change fonts, underline, that sort of stuff (the text that appears in the guest book, not the import form). Really simple--you'd think they would have figured out a way to let you do that.

Brat--keep reasearching. I don't care if you have to work day and night and flunk your classed. My guest book is more important!!! And you wouln't want to show up here one day and find out your account was disabled!!!


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## brendandonhu (Jul 8, 2002)

I'm about to disable your arse!

That basic stuff you can do with CSS. I'll find you a really basic tutorial.


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## brendandonhu (Jul 8, 2002)

Theres 2 ways to do that. Depends on what you need.
Do you want say name to be bold, email to be a certain font, etc.
Or do you want to apply font styles to the whole page?


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

Style sheets are kind of an all or nothing proposition Mulder.If you were to say define the paragraph tag to be bold like this:

P {
FONT-SIZE: 12px; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; FONT-WEIGHT: bold
}

Then everything within that paragraph tage will be set to bold. You need to define what elements you want to be formatted a certain way. It might not be what ou want, but it is a great tool for keeping all of the formatting throughout your pages consistent. It saves a lot of coding since you write one css file for your entire sites formatting.

Another example would be URL's on your pages. Again every URL on the page would be efected. If you want a hover effect it would look like this in the style sheet.

A:active {
COLOR: #4d7173; FONT-SIZE: 10px; FONT- WEIGHT: bold
}

This is all basic stuff and there is a lot more you can do with it.


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## brendandonhu (Jul 8, 2002)

OK I've figured something out.

Have frontpage save the data in the guestbook as guestlog.xml instead of guestlog.html.
Use hidden fields to add the actual XML tags into it.

Then use an XLS file to create the style/design of your guestbook, and put the XSL file into your webpage.

Tutorials on doing all this stuff at 
http://www.w3schools.com/xml/default.asp


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## Mulderator (Feb 20, 1999)

OK, thanks, I'll give it a try.


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## brendandonhu (Jul 8, 2002)

OK that would be waay more complicated than this needs to be. Use CSS as Rockn was saying, but save it as a .css file. Then apply it to guestlog.htm as if it were any regular FrontPage theme. 
Then, anything on that page would be formatted with it. But then all text would be the same color, all links the same, etc. If you wanted to have say Name bolded and email address in a smaller font, you could use the DIV tag to define where a style will be applied.
Example:
This defines what to apply to anything specified as "name"
DIV.name
{
text-transform: uppercase;
TEXT-ALIGN: left
}
blah blah blah. content. blah blah blah
this is how you specify something as "name"
Chris Mulder
This would show "Chris Mulder" in uppercase letters aligned to the left.


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## brendandonhu (Jul 8, 2002)

Ok mulder, are you still looking for a guestbook? I am learning PHP and I wrote one just for you LOL.
Check it out-it can be customized however you want....
http://members.lycos.co.uk/brendandonhue/guestbook.php


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## bassetman (Jun 7, 2001)

Geez Mulder, don't use what Angel does! I had pop-ups and cookies galore!


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