The Guestbook plugin is available at my website as Download. The actual version is 0.8c. The guestbook will be continously enhanced. It is an advantage to take a look what's new time by time.
Download the zip-file from Download and unzip it into the folder .\cmsimple\plugins. Take care to check the "use folder names" option while unzipping. After unzip you should have the following structure:
+-plugins
| +-gbook
| +-config
| +-content
| +-css
| +-help
| +-images
| +-languages
After
this you can start CMSimple and login into the Admin area. Now you
should see the Plugin in the list of all plugins. If you don't see it,
something is wrong (check the folder structure).
#CMSimple $output.= GBlist();#or
#CMSimple $output.= GBlist(cFilename);#
into your text, directely following to the heading. You can copy the text line directly from the description here. But please take care to control the HTML-code directly and delete, if necessary, the < FONT >-tags. The result should exactly look like shown above. If it looks like the following line
<font size="2">#</font>CMSimple $output.= GBlist();<font size="2">#</font>you should delete all <font> tag, because these tags are causing errors.
Specifying the filename cFilename is optionally. The specified filename should not contain any language shortcut or an file extension, both will be added automatically. If you specify as cFilename the string 'MyGuestbook', there will be a file with the name 'MyGuestbook_en.txt' used, if you use English as language. The splitting of the guestbook into a own part for each language can be switched off by setting the option common_guestbook to True. In this case only one guestbook will be used for all languages.
If you specify no filename, the GBook plugin will use the default string 'Guestbook' as first part of the filename.
Attention:
Don't forget to disable the default guestbook of CMSimple in the
settings. Otherwise spam will fill anyway the guestbook datafile (but
without being visible).
First you have to create an own page for the guestbook as described under 1.4.1. For hiding the guestbook in the normal menu/navigation structure, the addition command hide is necessary. So the following lines must be inside of the guestbook page:
#CMSimple hide #
#CMSimple $output.= GBlist(); #
As next step, you have to insert the link to the new guestbook into the template file. You have to exchange the following code
<?php echo guestbooklink(); ?>
with
<a href="index.php?Contact:Guestbook">Guestbook</a>
The path specified after "index.php?" is the menu structure you have choosen for storing / organizing the guestbook in your website. In this example the main menu is called Contact and the submenu, where the guestbook page is called has the name Guestbook. After this steps the default guestbook from CMSimple will be no longer shown and instead the GBook guestbook will be called.
If the GBook guestbook should be available in a member area, where only logged in members are having access, the following steps have to be proceeded:
First an own page, as described under 1.4.1, has to be created
for the guestbook. For hiding the guestbook page in the normal menu
structure (it should be visible only for members) the additional
command hide
is necessary:
#CMSimple hide #
As next line the commands for the memberpage and GBook plugins
must be entered. Both command must be specified in one
#CMSimple ... # command:
#CMSimple $output.=memberspage("Access denied","0"); $output .= GBlist(); #
This means, first the access will be checked and if successful, the guestbook will be shown.
GBook supports the use of multiple languages. There are no specific commands necessary. Gbook detects automatically which language is currently used and choose the dependent guestbook file.
At the moment the plugin comes with the following languages:
Danish, many thanks to Per Kongebro
Dutch, many thanks to Gerd Xhonneux
English
Finnish, many thanks to Ahti Kurki
French, many thanks to Gerd Xhonneux
German
Hungarian, many thanks to Zsolt Kádas
Italian, many thanks to Sandro Cavalieri Foschini
Norwegian, many thanks to Tobias Michel
Portuguese, many thanks to JoaoVr
Slovak, many thanks to Martin Sereday
If your language is not listed above, you can create your language as well. Just copy an exiting language file (e.g. en.php), rename this file according to the used language and translate the texts inside.
At this point I like to say "Thank you very much" to all the people, which have sent their translations to me!
Please feel free to send new languages files to me. I will include them in the very next setup, the author will be mentioned!
The GBook plugin is individually adaptable to the desired
functionality and layout by several settings.
The following settings are available:
date format: | |
time format: | |
captcha: | |
image captcha: | |
ucase captcha: | |
ask for email: | |
ask for website: | |
ask for title: | |
mandatory title: | |
mandatory email: | |
remove html: | |
items per page: | |
num of pages: | |
info mail: | |
thank mail: | |
thank sendfrom: | |
new entries: | |
spam words: | old, please don not use any longer |
show creator: | |
show narrowlink: | |
show email: | |
show website: | |
show ip addr: | |
store ip addr: | |
use smileys: | |
blocked words: | |
blocked IPs: | |
blocked domains: | |
blocked countries: | |
common guestbook: | |
quarantine time: |
date format: Use this field for defining how the date of the message should be displayed on the screen. The values of the field are the same as the date() function of PHP allows.
time format:
Use this field for defining how the time of the message should be
displayed on the screen.The values of the field are the same as the
date() function of PHP allows. The date() function of PHP is used as
well for date values as well for time values.
captcha: The captcha code is a string combinations of five characters and number, which must be entered by the user, if this setting is set to true. Does this value not match with the original captcha code, the new guestbook entry will not be stored. This setting avoids most of all spam entries. Possible values for this field are True or False.
image captcha: This option is for defining if the captcha code should be displayed as image or as normal text. Due to spamming attacks using an image is highly recommended. Possible values for this field are True or False.
ucase captcha: This option is for defining wether the captcha code should contain upper or lower case characters. Sometimes (e.g. with some fonts) the lower case display is better readable. Possible values for this field are True or False.
ask for email:
This field defines if the user will be asked for his e-mail address or
not. Possible values for this field are True or False.
ask for website: This option is for setting up if the user should be prompted for his website / homepage or not. Possible values for this field are True or False.
ask for title: This option defines if the user will asked for a title of his message or not. Possible values for this field are True or False.
mandatory title: This option defines if the user must enter a value into the field Title or not. This option can be set to True only when the option ask for title is set to True too. Possible values for this field are True or False.
remove html:
This field defines if maybe contained HTML code should be removed or
not. Possible values for this field are True or False.
Normally it is strongly recommended to set this option to True
for removing HTML code. This avoids bad links to websites which are
containing viruses, trojans and other ugly stuff.
items per page: With this option the administrator can define how many items per page should be displayed. Are there more entries in the guestbook, the plugin will split the content onto so many pages as necessary.
num of pages: This setting specifies how many page links will be shown left and right close to the actual page number in the navigation bar at the bottom of the guestbook.
info mail:
This field specifies to whom an info e-mail, that there is a new entry
in your guestbook, should be sent. In this field you can specify more
than one e-mail address. All e-mail addresses must be separated by a
comma.
thank mail:
This option defines if the visitor which has created a new message in
the guestbook will get an automatically send mail to thank him.
Possible values for this field are True or False.
The text of the thank mail is available in the section Language
and can be modified as you prefer.
thank sendfrom: This field
contains the e-mail address which will be shown as sender.
new entries:
This option allows to switch on and off the functionality of creating
new guestbook entries. Possible values for this field are True
or False.
This option can be used eg. when your guestbook is under maintenance or
your have some other problems. Normally this option should be set to True.
spam words: Since version 0.8 this option is no longer used. Use instead the option blocked words.
show creator: At the bottom of the guestbook will be a link to the author shown. If this text should not be shown this field must be set to False. Switching off this display is only possible after contacting the author. Possible values for this field are True or False.
show narrowlink: This option allows to switch on or off the links to previous "< Back" and next "Next >" page. Possible values are True or False.
show email: This options specifies if the e-mail address of the guestbook visitor will be shown or not. Possible values for this field are True or False. This option has no influence if the e-mail address will be stored or asked from the user (see also ask_for_email) or not. It's only for switching on/off the display.
show website: This option allows to define if the address of the homepage will be shown or not. Possible values for this field are True or False. This option has no influence if the homepage address will be asked from the user (see also ask_for_website) or not. It's just for switching the display on/off.
show ip addr: This option specifies if the ip address of the visitor will be shown or not. Possible values for this field are True or False. This option has no influence if the ip address will be stored (see store_ip_addr) or not. This setting is just for switching the display on/off.
store ip addr:This option allows to define if the ip address of the visitor will be retrieved and stored or not. Possible values for this field are True or False.
use smileys:This
options
enables or disables the support for using smileys. If this option is
switched on on the upper right corner of the message field a toolbar
with the available smileys will be displayed. If the user clicks on one
of the smileys the depending code will be copied into the message
field. Possible values for this field are True or
False.
Hints:
The smileys will be displayed in the message field in the common used
notation like :-) oder 8-), but internally they will be stored as a
describing code. This means the smiley :-) will be internally
:smile: or the smiley 8o will be internally stored as :eek:. This has
the advantage to support also smileys which are containing control
characters which would be otherwise unsupported.
The detection and online conversion of smileys is everytime active.
This means: If the smiley :-) was once a time used and stored
internally as :smile:, the visitor of the guestbook will see
independent of this setting everytime the graphical smiley.
List of supported smileys:
Icon | User input | Internal coding |
![]() |
:-) :) | :smile: |
![]() |
:-)) | :happy: |
![]() |
:-D :D | :biggrin: |
![]() |
;-) | :wink: |
![]() |
8-) | :cool |
![]() |
:P | :tongue: |
![]() |
:rolleyes: | :rolleyes: |
![]() |
8o | :eek: |
![]() |
?( | :confused: |
![]() |
:-( :( | :frown: |
![]() |
;-( | :crying: |
![]() |
X( | :mad: |
![]() |
:-> | :evil: |
Class | Description |
td.gbtitle | Formatting of title bar |
td.gblightline | Formatting of a light = even line (lines 2, 4, 6, 8, ...) |
td.gbdarkline | Formatting of a dark = odd line (lines 1, 3, 5, 7, ...) |
span.gbdatetime | Formatting of date and time |
div.gbname | Formatting of visitor name |
span.gbmessage | Formatting of message text |
input.gbcaptcha | Formatting of captcha text field |
input.gbtextbox | Formatting of text fields |
input.gbmsgbox | Formatting of message box |
How to install the Guestbook?
How to import the default Guestbook of
CMSimple?
How to create a new Language?
How to protect against SPAM?
How to avoid < SCRIPT > or
< HTML > in the entries?
How to change the colors of the
guestbook?
How to change the fonts of the
guestbook?
How to display the date and time
information?
How to use mail notification?
Why do I need to switch off
the guestbook?
Q: How to install the Guestbook?
A: A description how to install is available here (under the section installation). For individual questions and problems according the installations please use the forum.
Q: How to import the default Guestbook of CMSimple?
A: The default guestbook of
CMSimple stores all
entries directely as HTML in the guestbook file. This causes that
logical structures are nearly not existing, eg. to detect where is the
name stored or where does the message start and where it ends
Since version 0.6 the GBook plugin has a new function to import
existing guestbooks from CMSimple. To start this function, please go to
the administration section and start there the import routine. For a
detailled description how to import and which settings are necessary,
please take a look to the documentation of the installatione.
Q: How to create a new Language?
A: If you want to offer your
website in multiple
laguanges, surely the guestbook and its entries should support the
different languages as well. The plugin Gbook offers you this
functionality. It creates for each language its own guestbook file.
Each guestbook file ends with a two character code, representing the
containing language. For example the english guestbook has the filename
Guestbook_en.txt,
the german one the filename Guestbook_de.txt
and so on.
A general description, how to use multiple languages with CMSimple you
will find in the CMSimple manual.
A: Guestbooks are often the
target of spammer.
Mostly so called bots - automatically working programs - are used to
create the spam entries. To avoid automatic creating of entries Gbook
has the option to use a Captcha. This means for each new entry a code
of characters and numbers will be created. This code is displayed on
the screen and must be reentered by the user as aprovement. Most of the
bots can't do this, with the result no entry is created.
The gbook displays the approvement code (=CAPTCHA) if the
option is set to captcha
= True. The captcha is dynamically and individually created for each
user.
Another possiblity for spam protection is to use the options blocked_words, blocked_IPs, blocked_domains and blocked_countries. With this options manually created spam can be avoid too.
A: I fyou set the option remove_html = True,
gbook will remove alle HTML code in the text. These codes are
- Formatting (bold, italic, ...)
- Links (a href)
- Scripts (script)
Therefore no unexpected links or hidden code
can be stored in your guestbook entries.
Q: How to change the colors of the guestbook?
A: All color definitions
for gbook are stored
in the css file "stylesheet.css", located in the folder
"/plugins/Gbook/css". In this folder there are three additional css
files
which are containing alternative color definitions. But only the file
with the name "stylesheet.css" is used. If you like to use one of the
other css files, please rename the choosen one to "stylesheet.css".
If the predefined colors doesn't match to your website, please feel
free to modify the css file.
Q: How to change the fonts of the guestbook?
A: All font definitions are stored in the css file "stylesheet.css", located in the folder "/plugins/Gbook/css". Changes of the text layout (eg. font, font size etc.) can be made in this file.
A: The format for date and time can be set up to several formats. The default settings are having the following meaning:
Date format d.m.y
d
= display day with leading zero, followed by a dot ".",
m
= display month as number with leading zero, followed by a dot "." and
at least
y
= display the year as two-digit number.
Time format H:i:s
H = display hours in 24 hours format with leading zeros,
followed by ":",
i = display minutes with leading zeros, followed by ":"
and at least
s = display the seconds with leading zeros.
For more information please see PHP Online Documentation.
A: Immediately after successfully storing of a guestbook entry, a info mail to the webmaster can be send. The mail address of the webmaster must be specified in the configuration under info_mail. The e-mail service must be setup by your web provider in the PHP configurations.
Tipp:
Whe you specify in the field info_mail
multiple mail addresses, the info will be sent to all of them. The mail
addresses must be separated by a comma.
A: In spite of all protection, it can happen a spammer will fill your guestbook. If you want to switch of creating of new entries for some time, use the configuration new_entries = False to switch off the guestbook.