123guestbook is shutting down! alas! + alternatives

[Memory]

here's their announcement. sad! they've been around for a long time & i know a lot of people on neocities use 123guestbook for their guestbooks.

time to start looking into alternatives - i would love to know what folks are using besides this. what's good in the guestbook scene?

[BlackMageGaming]

Noooo!!!! I loved the customization it brought with it!

Oh well, I'll have to get a replacement very soon then, and port over my current signings. That's a real shame! This sucks for any webpage that is using it but isn't being worked on.

[wygolvillage]

This is horrible! So many people used it.

I may make a small archive page for the many kind messages I received, to replace my guestbook page once it goes down.

Very disheartening to hear. 

[Grimlock]

i'm currently using this one which i believe doesn't work on new sites with free neocities plans.

[Melooon]

Holy heck, I was just looking through their tour page and they say they have over 200,000 guestbooks  This is a very serious loss 

[Skykristal]

Yes that's so sad. I saw it on status.cafe yesterday and looked up the news post. From what I can tell there is no mentioned reason as to why it is shutting down??

Very unfortunate, since this is one of the most used guestbook services, especially on neocities.

I started my site with the smartbg thankfully. It has ads, but it's no problem with an ad Blocker, which I use anyway.
https://www.smartgb.com/

[wygolvillage]

From what I can tell there is no mentioned reason as to why it is shutting down??

I have no idea, maybe hosting costs?

[Skykristal]

I have no idea, maybe hosting costs?

Yeah that was my first thought too.. maybe it became unaffordable now. But also ( and I am no expert here) , it's set to read-only then, so it means it will still be up.. right? So idk if is makes sense. Since it will still host the content.

[Melooon]

It's only going read-only for a month before it goes offline for good I think 

This is pure speculation but I'm noting it for historical context! Hosting costs are currently cheaper than they have ever been in history, but I suspect ad revenue (123 is ad-supported) is also way down. 3rd party guestbooks are also now a very niche thing, most regular sites don't use them outside old homepages and web revival sites.

However I suspect the kicker here is older PHP versions; 123 was made in the 00s, so it's prob running on PHP 5-7. As of the last two years, most web hosts (including the one that 123 is registered with) are banning anything below PHP 8. It might simply be that it's not worth the time and effort of updating the code or switching to a custom server running PHP 7 for the webmaster 

I have opinions on the constant upgrade-rat-race that web technologies are in, but thats something for another thread!

[wygolvillage]

However I suspect the kicker here is older PHP versions; 123 was made in the 00s, so it's prob running on PHP 5-7. As of the last two years, most web hosts (including the one that 123 is registered with) are banning anything below PHP 8.

That makes a lot of sense! I wish they would just come out and say that though rather then leaving us wondering

And I agree, I think the niche-ness of guestbooks in the current day was probably a deciding factor when it came to deciding to pull the plug.

My guestbook page has now been converted into a nice little archive of the messages I got! Don't cry because it's over smile because it happened etc etc

[GradientMan]

Zamn! Wasn't expecting that. I am thinking of archiving the guestbook since they say that they're going to make they guestbooks read-only this June. When that happens, I'll link every occurence of the guestbook to an archive I'll make. Hopefully I won't forget... Otherwise that'd be a bummer. I would have to make a replacement page saying that it's my fault for not archiving it.

It's only going read-only for a month before it goes offline for good I think 

Exactly what I'm saying. They've confirmed it. x

~Mod note: merged posts!

[Skykristal]

oh that's interesting. I don't know anything about PHP. thanks for the insight Melooon!

[cyberfun1 (dizz)]

man this sucks  i really fuckin hate this
i really hate how its always super unexpected, like why cant i get a warning in advance for things like this

[CRiNGE]

Oh, damn. I'm really glad that I switched awhile ago.

I feel I should start manually archiving the guestbook messages I get, just in case something like this happens again with HTML Comment Box.

I notified the ArchiveTeam via IRC, but I don't know if anything else is going to be done.

[Kalka]

Oh, I didn't saw it, I'm glad it was reported here because I wouldn't have noticed ! July is in two months, that'll leave enough time for people to change. At some point I'm wondering about making some kind of shoutbox or something for my site. It's not the most important part of my website either so I'll take time to think about a replacement yes.

Thanks a lot for informing us on this board !