Comments on: Are You Still Using a Guest Book?

By: John Winslow

John Winslow — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 10:43:43 +0000

I have one. Some use it, some don’t… Why do I have it when I have open commenting?????

I freaking hate OFF TOPIC commenting on my posts…. Put your off-topic stuff in the guestbook, or send me a private message on my contact page (yup, have one of those too)….

I just think comments on the entries should be relevant to the entry, not hellos and hihowareyas.

Call me anal (then again… DON’T) lol

By: Lorelle VanFossen

Lorelle VanFossen — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 18:28:51 +0000

Well, grandpa ;-)

Do people really sign in on your guestbook? You’d think that the best place to introduce themselves would be through your post comments. If you are using your guest book like a contact form, then that makes sense. Still, do people look for “guest book” or “contact” when using your blog?

Good point, though. Thanks!

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 16:24:38 +0000

I have to admit, I have a guestbook on one of my blogs. I thought it would be a nice place for readers to introduce themselves. Usually, when people comment, they stick with the topic at hand. For some commentators they don’t have blogs themselves, so it’s always nice to have an idea as to who they are.

But, in the end, I think if you have loyal readers, you get to know them along the way anyways, so it can be redundant.

Maybe you can just call me grandpa.

By: Anne Helmond

Anne Helmond — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 06:55:19 +0000

I can’t remember ever having used a guestbook. It used to be rather spam-safe to leave your e-mail address on your website. We then changed to puzzles like “e-mail me at myfirstname [at] thisdomain.com.” I think the contact form has replaced the guestbook although they are two quite different things. In a guestbook all the comments are stored for everyone to see and with a contact form they vanish into a big black box called e-mail. I prefer guestbooks for this reason because often you receive messages (from people you lost contact with or old colleagues) that you don’t necessarily want to display on your webpage. And those who want to say something in relation to the content of your blog are more than welcome in your comments section.

I’d pretty much forgotten about the existence of guestbooks, nice retro thought food!

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 03:59:45 +0000

Well, I think my last guestbook on a personal site was around 1997… but I sure don’t see Twitter as any sort of improvement or upgrade!