A guestbook is a program that allows outside users to log entries to your web page. Guestbooks have been used on the
Web as a way for web page visitors to post a comment about a web site. In instructional settings, guestbooks provide
simpler means for students to post messages to a class "log", or guestbook.
In order to be eligible to request a guestbook, you have to have a valid account. A valid
account is a faculty/staff member of one of the four colleges (American River, Sacramento
City, Consumnes River, and Folsom) who has a valid web account. To get to the Guestbook Request page,
please choose your campus from the following drop down menu:
(For Guestbooks at ARC, please contact Phil Smith.)
If you have a guestbook and you wish to remove it or clear the entries from a
guestbook, you
can go to the Guestbook Administration page which will allow you to do either choice. To get to the Guestbook Administration page,
please select your campus from the following drop down menu:
Yes. Simply use the "remove all entries" option on the Guestbook Administration page to
remove the current postings from your guestbook. This is an excellent way to re-use guestbooks each semester.
You can have as many guestbooks as you require for instructional purposes. As long as you create a guestbook with a unique
abbreviation from the other guestbooks, you will be able to create multiple guestbooks. However, please remember to remove
the guestbooks if you no longer have any use for them, or re-use them so that the number of guestbooks does not take up too much
disk space on the server.
Your guestbook entry most likely did not show up because your browser did not reload the
page, it simply pulled it out of cache. Pulling a web page out of "cache" means that the first time you view the page,
the browser stores the page in memory. When you go back to the guestbook page, it retrieves the previously viewed page
from memory and displays it, without updating the web page in memory. In order to update the web page in memory, hit the
"reload" or "refresh" button on the browser.
When you create a guestbook, you will be required to enter a unique abbreviation
for the guestbook. This unique abbreviation will be appended to the standard guestbook directory
name prefix gb- to form the guestbook directory name (in the form of gb-(unique abbreviation)).
For example, if you enter csc101 for your unique abbreviation, the sub-directory that is created in your
web account will be gb-csc101. All files necessary for your guestbook will be placed in this
sub-directory.
Upon successful creation of your guestbook(s), you can setup a secondary account for another person
who you want to manage your guestbooks. In order to do so, you need to go to the Administer Guestbooks
page found on your college's web server. Note: If you choose to setup a secondary administrator, this account will be able to administer
ALL guestbooks in your account (this is different than the web forum administrator functionality).
A guestbook is a linear listing of visitor comments, questions, and posts. It does not allow other visitors
to post comments or replies directly to someone else's post. Each new message is simply posted to the top of
the guestbook page.
A web forum is like a threaded conversation, allowing students to post individual messages, as well as
reply to existing messages in more of a "discussion board" format. A reply to an existing message is posted
directly underneath the existing message, so that threads of conversations/topics are grouped together for
easy location.
