McWebber Guestbook Help

McWebber Guestbook Help Page

Adding a guestbook to your page is an easy way to get comments from people who are visiting your page. Also, if you're running a commercial page, it's an easy way to take orders or get an email address of someone visiting your page. Here's my guestbook. That guestbook emails the results to me. I did this by using a free service I found on the web. The Free service requires some knowledge of HTML. If you want to use it, Click here.
Under no circumstances will I help anyone with using that service, all of the instructions are available at that web site.
@Home members, Click Here for instructions.
Another kind of guestbook, available on AOL, is one that posts responses to another page, or it can post the responses on the same page like a message board. Where the postings go is determined by the FORM ACTION tag in the code for the guestbook.

AOL Personal Publisher 2 users, click here. (Thanks to AOL Member Duncann for PP2 Instructions.)

@Home members Click Here

Tripod members Click Here

Geocities members Click Here

The basic AOL guestbook has three separate files.

The form, (the part the visitor fills in)

The .gbt file, (controls the layout of the posting page)

The posting page, (the page the responses appear on)

The page the responses appear on, (let's call that posting.html), and the .gbt file must have the same name. So for posting.html, your .gbt file must be called posting.gbt. By default, when someone hits the "Submit" button on your AOL page, they're taken to a generic "Thank You" page on AOL. You can add a simple line of code to your guestbook so that when they hit send, they go to your posting.html and see what everyone else has written. Or, you can create your own thanks page. If you had filled in my guestbook and hit send, you'd be taken to my customized thanks page. (Since my guestbook emails the responses to me, I don't have a page for people to see the postings.)

Now let's take a look at a simple guestbook and the posting page for it. Click here to view the code.

Once you have all three separate files made, (guestbook.html, posting.html & posting.gbt), upload them to AOL Keyword "My Place". Click on "Go To My Place", Click "Upload". In the "Remote Filename" enter the name you want to use on the WWW. (i.e. guestbook.html)
You can save the files by copying and pasting into your Notepad accessory or any other plain text editor, or click on the links to the .txt files of the three pages. You'll find those links immediately after each of the three examples below.

Thanks for stopping by!

Thank you!

Note: If your browser doesn't support forms Click Here to e-mail us.

Now here's the code for the guestbook on this page.

1. Copy the following code by highlighting it with your mouse and hit Ctrl+C to copy, then paste it into your Notepad accessory and save as guestbk.html.
NOTE: Do not attempt to save this page to get the following code as it will not work properly.

<!--copy from here down and save as guestbk.html ----->

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>My Guestbook<TITLE>
</HEAD>

<!--Personal Publisher users copy from here to 
where it says END PP2 ---->

<BODY TEXT="#000000" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" 
LINK="#FF0000" VLINK="#808080" 
ALINK="#0000FF">
<H3>Thanks for stopping by!</H3>
<P><FORM 
ACTION="/cgi-bin/guestbook/screenname/posting.html" 
METHOD="POST"></P>
<!-----change screenname to your 
AOL name------------>
<P>Please let us know any comments, suggestions or 
questions you may have about our web site. </P>
<P><TEXTAREA NAME="comments" wrap=virtual 
ROWS=8 COLS=55></TEXTAREA></P>
<P>Please leave your email address:</P>
<P> <INPUT TYPE="text" 
NAME="email" SIZE="60"></P>
<P>Tell us your name:</P>
<P> <INPUT TYPE="text" 
NAME="name" SIZE="60"></P>
<P>How did you find our page?</P>
<P> <INPUT TYPE="text" 
NAME="locate" SIZE="60"></P>
<P>My home page is URL:</P>
<P> <INPUT TYPE="text" 
NAME="page" value="http://" 
SIZE="60"></P>
<P>Title of my page is:</P>
<P> <INPUT TYPE="text" 
NAME="title" SIZE="60"></P>
<INPUT TYPE="SUBMIT" VALUE="Send">
<INPUT TYPE="RESET" VALUE="Reset">
<INPUT TYPE="hidden"NAME="ResponsePage" 
VALUE="http://members.aol.com/screenname/posting.html">
<!-------------change screenname to your AOL name------>
<INPUT TYPE="hidden" 
NAME="required" VALUE="name,locate">
</FORM>
<P><I>Thank you!</I></P>
<P><I><FONT SIZE=-1>Note: If your browser 
doesn't support forms 
<A HREF="mailto:screenname@aol.com?subject=guestbook">
<!-------change 
screenname to your AOL name--------->
Click Here</A> to e-mail 
me.</FONT></I></P>

<!-----END PP2 AND PASTE INTO YOUR PERSONAL PUBLISHER ----->
</BODY>
</HTML>

<!-----copy the above and save as guestbk.html--->

Remember!: Be sure to replace "screenname" in the code above with your AOL screen name after you paste it into Notepad and before you save it.

Click here for a .txt file of guestbook.html that you can save. Be sure to save it as guestbk.html

2. To complete the guestbook posting you need the .gbt file also. Copy and paste the following code also and save as posting.gbt.
Or click here for the .txt file.

The .gbt file is really just a text file that you name .gbt when you upload it to the server. (When you go to AOL keyword My Place to upload, you're asked for the Remote Filename) Here's the code for the posting.gbt file:

<CENTER> #date# - #time# - From: <A HREF="mailto:#email#"> #name#</a> </CENTER> Comments about the web site: #comments# How I found your page: #locate# My home page:<A HREF="#page#"> #page#</a> #title# </CENTER> <HR>

Copy the code above by highlighting with your mouse. Paste it into Notepad and save it as posting.gbt.

Click here for a text file of the posting.gbt that you can save. Be sure to save it as posting.gbt.

3. Now you need the posting.html code. Copy and paste this and save as posting.html.
Or click here for the .txt file be sure to save as posting.html.

<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>Screenname Posting Page<TITLE> </HEAD>  <BODY TEXT="#000000" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" LINK="#FF0000" VLINK="#808080" ALINK="#0000FF"> <CENTER>Thanks for filling out my guestbook.</CENTER> <CENTER>Here's what some of my visitors have written.</CENTER> <CENTER> <HR SIZE=4 WIDTH="75%"></CENTER>  </BODY> </HTML>

Now, with the above, you can see on my posting.html page how the layout is controlled by the posting.gbt file.

Click here for a text file of the posting.html that you can save. Be sure to save it as posting.html.

Also, by using the HTML tags, I'm able to make certain things clickable or hyperlinks in the guestbook. The Date and Time are added by putting #date# and #time# in your .gbt because they're part of the AOL CGI Guestbook program. Everything about the guestbook is determined by the AOL CGI Guestbook program.

To further customize your guestbook with checkboxes, dropdown selects and more, Click here.

E-mail Guestbook You can make this guestbook email to you instead of posting to another page. Click here.

You can copy and paste the code above into your Notepad accessory, or any other word processor. Save the file as text or .html. Just make sure you change mcwebber anywhere in the code, to your own screen name. Also, since the address of the page that this form sends to is posting.html, you'll have to be sure you call your posting page posting.html.
To see the code for the posting page, fill in the form and hit send. Or click here to see the posting.html page.

Making the guestbook email the responses.

1. To make the form email you instead of posting to another page, replace the FORM ACTION tag with this tag instead:

<form action="/cgi-bin/email/screenname/posting.eml" method="POST"> (replace screenname with your AOL screen name)

So that the email you receive will have the SUBJECT line filled in with the word "Guestbook", add this tag anywhere before the </FORM> tag:

<INPUT TYPE="hidden" NAME="SUBJECT" VALUE="Guestbook">

2. Then make a .eml file instead of the .gbt file. The .eml file for the guestbook above would be as follows:

From: <a href="mailto:#email#">#name#</a> How I found your page: #locate# My home page is called <a href="#page#">#title#</a> #page# Comments on the web site: #comments#

Just as you did with the guestbook code, highlight, copy and paste the above code and save as posting.eml.

The hyperlink instructions are added so that on an AOL email, you'll be able to click on the name to reply because your email will appear to be from yourself.
Adding the hyperlink information to the #title# value makes that a clickable link in your email too.

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