The guestbook works on the Internet in the same way as it's real-life counterpart. Guestbook is an easy way to allow your website visitors to write their greetings and comments about your site. Nowadays guestbooks are almost a standard feature on a web site.

Here you'll find a brief description of the Freebok guestbook features. At a first glance the feature list may seem long and some terms hard to grasp. In practice you don't need to understand these terms to use the guestbook; the guestbook is fully functional right after you create it. You'll learn to use the extra features when you need them.

Please note that almost all of these features are optional. E.g. if you don't want to be notified by email about new guestbook messages you are able to disable that feature.

Guestbook management

Sharing guestbook management with another user

If the guestbook is used on a page that has more than one author you can share ( i ) the guestbook management with another user.

Multiple guestbooks using one User Account

You can easily manage multiple guestbooks using one account if you have more than one homepage or you want to use multiple guestbooks for some other reason.

Messages

Multiple message types

The guestbook may contain several different types of messages. You can use the guestbook management pages to delete or move the messages as needed.

• Guestbook messages
  These are normal guestbook messages that are visible to all guestbook viewers.
• Private messages
  Private messages are visible only to you in the guestbook management pages
• Moderated messages
  Moderation is a guestbook feature that allows you to review new messages before you make them visible (or remove them) in the guestbook.
• Message archive
  You can archive the messages that you consider important.
• Recycle bin
  Messages that you remove will be moved to the recycle bin. You can restore the messages from the bin in case of accidental removal.

Email notifications

You'll be notified by email whenever there is new message submitted to your guestbook.

Automated message acknowledgement

You are able to create an email message that will be automatically sent to whoever signs the guestbook and provides email address.

Automatic message removal and archieving

You can define a timelimit which is used to automatically remove or archive messages that are older than the limit indicates.

Guestbook layout

Form or Template layout

The guestbook layout can be modified by two alternative methods; using web forms or by using Template layout.

Modification options for Form layout

The Form layout contains question fields that you edit in order to change the guestbook layout. This form of modification should be familiar to most users. Here is a short (incomplete) list of what can be changed by using the Form layout./p>

• Guestbook question fields
• Title and header texts
• Layout of the question fields
• Layout of the message
• Font, background image, separator lines, etc.
• Colors (texts, background, links etc.)

Template layout modification options

With Template layout the guestbook page will be constructed using HTML code that you have complete access to. This way you have complete control over the guestbook layout.

Freebok uses a template engine called Velocity ( i ) to render the guestbook pages. Velocity allows you to add dynamic content to a HTML page by using simple yet powerful scripting language, the Velocity Template Language (VTL).

Template layout is a non-free plus feature.

Abuse protection

Guestbook moderation

The moderation feature allows you to read new guestbook messages before they are displayed in the guestbook. This is a very good method to discourage guestbook abusers.

Message Timelimit

Message timelimit is used to limit how often messages can be written from one web address. Timelimit is an efficient method to prevent flooding.

Black list

New messages cannot be entered from IP addresses that are listed in the black list.

Profanity filter

Profanity filter is a case insensitive list of words that cannot be written to your guestbook.

Paid features

These features are available for a small fee

Guestbook +

Guestbook plus features include:

• 500 additional messages (total max. 1000 messages)
• No advertisements in the guestbook
• Freely definable layout with Template Layout ( i )

Please note that VIP members ( i ) may use plus features for all of their guestbooks free of charge!

Extra messages

The number of messages in the guestbook is limited. You may increase the message limit to up to ten times compared to the default limit.

Other features

Uses Unicode

Thanks to Unicode many International languages are supported.