The Guestbook Era

Every personal website in the late 1990s had a guestbook. It was the comments section before there were comments sections. The social media before there was social media.

The guestbook was simple: a form with fields for your name, email, website URL, and a message. You'd leave a note, and it would appear on the page for everyone to see. That was it. That was the whole social network.

The Etiquette

There were unwritten rules. If someone signed your guestbook, you were expected to visit their site and sign theirs. It was reciprocal. It was polite. It was a web of mutual acknowledgment.

Common guestbook entries included:

• "Cool site! Check out mine at geocities.com/~username"
• "I found your page through WebRing. Nice work!"
• "How did you make the background change colors? Email me!"
• "visitor #4,752 :)"

The Technology

Most guestbooks were powered by CGI scripts — usually Perl, running on shared hosting. Services like Dreambook and Lpage offered free hosted guestbooks that you could embed on your site with a simple link.

The technical simplicity was the point. You didn't need a database (though some had one). A flat text file was enough. Append a new entry, read the file, display the entries. Done.

What Changed

Blog comments replaced guestbooks. Then social media replaced blog comments. Then social media replaced blogs. Each iteration was more sophisticated, more engaging, more addictive — and somehow less personal.

A guestbook entry on someone's personal website was a direct, intentional act of connection. You had to navigate to their site, find the guestbook page, fill out the form, and leave a message. There was no algorithm suggesting you do this. No notification badge drawing your attention. Just genuine curiosity and the desire to say hello.

I miss that.