I remember a long time ago when I first got on the Internet, and I was amazed that I could find a few pages on Japanese Animation... not many, but a few. And every now and then I would find a page that I thought was cool enough that I would want to send the site author a message. Well I didn't have an e-mail address, so what do I do? Sign their guestbook of course! So within three months I'm trying to make my own page, and one of the first things I think of is a Guestbook. I remember once writing the comment: "Guestbooks are great because they allow people without e-mail to send you comments". It's been a few years since then, and I've had quite the change of heart. Guestbooks just suck. You want my advice if your starting out? Don't even get one.
First there is a problem of finding one. The first server I went with was guestworld (or whatever they're called now). For the first year they were okay. Then they started getting bigger. They switched servers and immediately their guestbooks started going down about 30% of the time. Between Guestworld and Geocities constantly going down, it's surprising that I got any comments at all. Eventually I just got sick of Guestworld, for many reasons that I'd rather not go into. I then got a toonzbook, which was actually pretty cool once I modified some of the code for it. But then it went down, and after seeing the guy who ran it being swamped by immature whiny kids, I really didn't blame him for not fixing it right away. I decided not to push the issue, and I just abandoned the guestbook. I've looked into cgi guestbooks, but basically they all suck, and I'm way to busy right now to write my own, so that's out of the question. Right now I have an okay guestbook host, but that's not the real reason guestbooks suck...
The real reason guestbooks suck, is because of the comments people make. How many times have I seen "great page, keep up the good work". Do these people honestly think I haven't seen that? I think I can actually sum up 75% of guestbook signings.
1) Great page, keep up the good work.
2) This site rocks, etc. etc.
3) Visit my site
4) you need more pictures
After 4+ years, I think this stuff starts to get a little old. Signing and telling me that you liked something specifically is cool, but just saying "great page"? It's better if you just save yourself the effort. Then there is the fact that someone will say something which warrants a reply, and of course they can't even type their e-mail address right. And don't even get me started on the people that just come to guestbooks to post banners for their own sites (I mean get a life people!). Then there is the 'anonymous coward' flames that always pop up in guestbooks, typically just saying something completely idiotic. All of this stuff is exactly the reason I didn't fix my guestbook for a few months. Why? Well NOT having a guestbook has all sorts of benefits. First of all it eliminates the people who are too stupid to figure out e-mail. E-mail now days isn't too hard to set up, and you can get a free account just about anywhere. Of course I still happen to get blank e-mails every now and then, which shows that some people are barely capable of making it over that intelligence hurdle. It also eliminates the anonymous coward flame. If you want to flame my site, then you have to have the GUTS to have sent an e-mail which can be replied to. E-mail also takes more time, so people generally don't take the time to send an e-mail JUST to say "nice page", they generally say something else too. Still, I think it is better to get an e-mail that says "nice page" than a guestbook signing. At least the person that sent the e-mail took some time out to do it.
With hindsight, it really doesn't seem like such a great idea to have a guestbook. Basically guestbooks are supposed to be about feedback, but what they really turn out to be is a board to post meaningless drivel. Sure there are some people that post good stuff, but I doubt that the ratio even reaches 1 : 10. E-mail seems to be the way to go.
Note: as of August 2000 I gave up and just made my own guestbook