Yes - Like many bloggers and web denizens, I used to have a guest book. As a matter of fact I had a guestbook more than once. There was a time where one could invite unsolicited comments from visitors and publicly display them. People would sign your guestbook, leave little snippets about how much they liked your site, the photos you posted, or your article about 'Free Speech'. There were even automated 'scripts' that made guestbooks 'easy'. It didn't take long; it didn't take long for spammers and haters to make guestbooks unusable, dangerous, and downright despicable.

Something changed, and guestbooks became magnets for spammers. A place where some low-life could tell people about his latest get rich scheme, teen porn, or discount viagra. That's about the same time that my guestbook stopped working (the first time). I spent some time troubleshooting it, looking for alternatives, and contemplating the usefulness of said guestbook. In the end, I decided to leave the guestbook broken, and not replace it. I originally had a guest book from 1996 - 2002.

My site survived without a guestbook for a year (2002-2003). That guestbook script had stopped working, but I decided to bring back the guestbook (in 2003). After a brief search, I found a new guestbook. One that made it slightly harder for people to spew their hateful messages in between the grateful, cordial and amusing missives of the guestbook. I put up this new guestbook, and for a short time, the spam problem went away (the new features worked). Unfortunately, that only lasted for a very brief period. In no time at all, I started to see the re-emergence of spam, and this time the spammers were posting trojans in my guestbook. Great! Not only do I have to deal with the spam, now I had to worry about visitors getting infected when they visited my website. Needless to say, I had to turn off my guestbook again (in Oct of 2006).

By 2007, I had once again turned my guestbook back on. I changed it's location, and that seemed to work for a while. Most people looking for guestbook vulnerabilities only knew that it lived in some specific directories, and it had specific names. I changed those places and names. That managed to keep the spammers away for some time. By 2012, I had moved to a new webhosting service. The new webhost provided a slew of scripting services and plugin solutions. One of those solutions was a variety of guestbooks. After a brief review, I found one that seemed to offer a fair amount of protection against spam. It took a few days to get the guestbook installed and configured, and another couple of hours to transfer all the old guestbook entries into this new guestbook.

So, the new guestbook was up and running. It stood up up to a legion of spammers looking for a place to deposit their steaming heaps of spam. I encouraged all visitors to leave a little note, a small blurb regarding their experiences, a delightful dissertation on the merits of "Rob's World!". I read everyone's note - Even yours. My public guestbook was back in service from 2012 - 2019. I even imported all the old entries from 1996-2012.

By 2019, it was apparent. It was evident. No one had signed my guestbook in over four years... Guestbooks are no longer relevant. The only thing they do now, is serve as a reminder of a different time. A time when the internet wasn't 'Centralized' - AOL went away when the internet promised a bright future of diversity. The guestbook went away when people started flocking (once again) to centralized services like F*book.

Goodbye guestbook - We enjoyed having you around, but spammers and social media sites have ruined you forever. We loved you, but you weren't popular enough to compete with the likes of F*book, and spammers found you to be an irresistable way to spew their viral crap. I will miss you. (R. Vaessen - 20 Jul, 2019)

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spamdexing#Link_spam>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guestbook>

Name: Brad Roddy
Host: c-107-2-172-204.hsd1.co.comcast.net
Location: Scenic Aurora, Colorado
E-mail: notarealaddress@example.org

Comments: Aug 13, 2007

Sweet Bobby V,

What is up? I hadn't checked out your page in a while so I thought I would stop by for while. Just want to let you know that I bought the new iMac so I will probably be pestering you from time to time for Apple education. Well I'll check you later.

Brad

Author: Robert L. Vaessen e-mail:
Last Updated: January 1, 2025