NEW version of GBook: 1.7

[Klemen]

I am pleased to announce a new version of GBook!

DATE: 20th August 2009
VERSION: 1.7
DEMO: http://www.phpjunkyard.com/gbook/gbook.php
DOWNLOAD: http://www.phpjunkyard.com/php-guestbook-script.php
CHANGES:
- New user interface (new tableless design, new style.css file, images have alt and title tags, valid XHTML)
- All HTML code has been moved to templates (easier to modify, share templates, add new emoticons, ...)
- Improved JunkMark anti-SPAM filter
- New anti-SPAM feature: a customized anti-SPAM logical question
- Improved Captcha anti-SPAM image
- You can now manually approve new posts
- You can limit length of Comments
- You can limit the number of Emoticons (Smileys) per post
- Customers can receive an e-mail notification when administrator replies to their post
- Removed go.php file (didn't really serve it's initial purpose)

For questions/problems/upgrade instructions please read the README.HTM file first before posting!

Let me know if any problems occur that are not covered in the readme.htm!

Comments welcome.

[Henrie]

Thank you Klemen,

The new version looks fantastic (only saw the demo and source files, i am not using it yet).
I have not gotten around to updating my own (HL-mod) version and now it seems i don't have to anymore.

I especially like that you have made it possible to use templates now. I thought about doing this for my HL-mod version (because i did not update my guestbooks because of to much modifications in layout), but did not know how to do it.
So now only once converting my layouts and i can use the regular GBook.

Thank you!!!

Greetings,
Henrie

[Klemen]

Glad you like it.

The template system is a very basic one, basically just all the HTML code (with some PHP inserts) extracted and placed into separate files. I was thinking of using a template system like Smarty, but then decided it is too complicated for a simple (just a few pages) script like GBook.

[malakate]

Hello, thank you very much for your scripts are very useful. In your last gbook 1.7 I cant take Smyles off, There are always on the screen, turn off from the settings but continued on the screen. I dont know if it is my mistake or something else. Besides, I wanted to ask some gbook next project you add to the option of placing a review with a rating (stars), that would make your gbook 100% perfect:) Thank you! Sorry for my English! its no my main language.

[Henrie]

Ah yes, i tested this now and it seems the functionality of the $settings['smileys']=0; has changed compared to GBook 1.6.
In GBook 1.6 no option to insert smileys were shown on screen and thus could also not be inserted.
In Gbook 1.7 smileys are shown and the popup is also active to insert smileys in the message. They are just not converted to images anymore when posting the message.

In my opinion the way it worked in GBook 1.6 is the expected behaviour for the $settings['smileys']=0; , to discourage the use of smileys as much as possible.

I support malakate in his request to not show smiley insert functionality on screen when $settings['smileys']=0;

Greetings,
Henrie

[Klemen]

Will be changed to how it previously worked, thanks for the feedback.

[jackter]

I just upgraded from 1.6 and found only one small problem. The smileys in previous posts do not appear. My solution was to copy the images directory from 1.6 to the same location in 1.7 and that solved the problem.

The font change to Verdana certainly makes the entries easier to read.

Thanks for making the Guestbook better.

[Fudeba]

Hello. Nice, but I sugest to you implement a caracter count in a post field, like I implemented on version 1.6

I this guestbook below, i have implemented post limit by my self In this book is limited to 500 caracters, include emoticons.

See here:

http://www.py2bbs.qsl.br/guestbook/gbook.php?a=sign

And a question. To it's easy to upgrade from 1.6 to 1.7?

I'm afraid to several problems, mainly because I changed the book to have an extra field, which also would not hurt to have around and can be switched on and off the installation, as needed by the User.

[ayonman]

I tried uploading gbook.php to my server for quite number of attempts but they were aborted. I suspected something in the code is not accepted by the server's php version, so I tried deleting part of the "eval" code leaving only "eval(gzinflate", then the file was successfully uploaded. Guestbook now works but I know I am missing some features of it, like the language protection. Hope Mr. Klemen Stirn can give me some advice/s. Thanks and regards...

[Klemen]

Do you by any chance use GoDaddy hosting?

It's a problem with some anti-virus programs they (and possibly some other hosts) use that blocks any files containing code encoded this way (see viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3781 ).

If you do use GoDaddy there is a work-around: upload the Gbook ZIP file (the archive) using GoDaddy's File manager in the hosting control panel, then use the same file manager to extract (decompress) the archive. This way all the files should be successfully extracted on the server.

I will try to find an alternative means of encoding that code so it doesn't get blocked anymore in the future version.

If you would be by any chance prepared to let me access your hosting account to test a few different encoding approaches let me know.

[Klemen]

After a few tests this file may fix the problem, upload it instead of original gbook.php file:
http://www.phpjunkyard.com/extras/gbook17_evalfix.zip

If it does fix your problem please let me know.

[ayonman]

Yes!... The new file gbook.php has been successfully uploaded and accepted by my web host. It's now running with no error logs. I am getting the "Powered by" link though, but no problem, this is only a test and site is for a church use. No spammers may want to spam a godly site.. hope so.

Thanks for the help, Mr. Klemen Stirn.

[ayonman]

To Mr. Klemen Stirn:
Have a blessed day. Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to you, family and the PHP team.

[Klemen]

I'm glad to hear it works for you now!

Did you purchase a license to remove the "powered by" links and it doesn't work? If yes, contact me using this contact form and I will check what's wrong.

[Johnno]

I successfully installed new version GBook1.7. It's great. Thanks. Everything works well with submissions except I am having trouble with the manual approval feature (which I would like to use). I get sent an email with both the approve and reject URL links but when I try to access these links I get a message that the server cannot be found.

Any suggestions?

Regards.