Using external guestbook on website?

[Gabrielle]

My site offers a guestbook service. Unfortunately, as I know nothing about CGI scripts, I'm limited to the service provided by my host, which is held on their main serverwithout a friendly URL.

If you were going to pay money for this service, would you want to see that the author of Memories For You knew enough to make her own guestbook? And if so, is there any kind person out there who can give me a quick fix?

I am happy to learn it from W3Schools - I've picked up plenty from there in the past month - but I was hoping for a brains-free, complete-by-tomorrow variety of fix. I have added CGI script to pages in the past, but that was also from a script library (Matt's), and I subsequently read that it was very insecure - though I don't know enough to understand whether that's true!

[ronaldb66]

Does it have to be CGI?

Gabrielle,

do you know if your hosting provider supports PHP?
There must be a ton of easy-to-use, ready-made guestbook and other sorts of PHP scripts out there. Creating one of your own, or at least customising it to your own liking, will look good, though...

[lavalamp]

Check out hotscripts.com for all your guestbook needs.

[ronaldb66]

Whoa...

Pssh, a skimpy 119 different gustbook scripts... Thلt should do nicely!

By the way, I thought Hotscripts only featured silly cursor-trailing harts and junk like that, but they seem to have some useful stuff, too!

[lavalamp]

I went there to get an ASP guestbook for a web-site I'm currently working on. Coincidentally I happened to pick the guestbook that was made by the Administrator of physicsforums.com (which I've been a member of for some time).

[Gabrielle]

Whoa - one at a time, guys!!

Ronald - I think it supports php, but I ran into a problem at the very first hurdle. The advice given was:

Save this line <?php phpinfo(); ?> and upload to your domain, then browse there and you'll see your php privileges.

Well, notepad (W98) very kindly appended .txt to my code, and once uploaded, all I get is a line of text on a browser window!

So I've just tried on NS7.1 Composer, and succeeded in saving without a .txt suffix - now I've uploaded, though, I just get an error 501 , whatever that means.

Can someone help me even more? I feel like the hole's just getting deeper! And thanks for the links, guys, but I don't feel I can use them until I work out what Evil Cosmic Lord of the Internet doesn't want me to publish in php, and how to counter his evil plans!

[ronaldb66]

Facility unavailable

Sounds to me like the server doesn't support PHP... or, at least not the .php extension. Your best bet would be to ask your hosting provider, but what is the file you've uploaded actually called, and can you see it residing on the server in the right directory with that name?
As a test, try saving your main page as "index2.php"; it should simply show up as original when addressed properly, unless the .php extension isn't recognized.

Update:
look around on php.net (the official PHP-site) for more PHP-info; I found something in the FAQ about related (500) errors (see question 7): PHP Installation FAQ.

[Gabrielle]

PHP not supported - official

My host is not set up in an accessible and easy to navigate manner, but I've found the right page eventually (I did stop for lunch, in between). And unfortunately I'm just not paying enough to use php.

Does that mean I can't use any of the fantastic things on hotscripts, then? And am stuck with their user-unfriendly url?

[Nightfire]

If you're not getting something like php on your host which you're paying for, I suggest finding a new host. Pay more for php?

[Gabrielle]

Should have read the small print (medium, actually)

My host was recommended to me, but I haven't been that impressed by their layout, etc, in fact the price is nearly the only thing that works for me. But then I'm new to paying-for-my-hosting, and I wasn't expecting more. Can anyone suggest a paysite that I can transfer my domain name to? I'd prefer UKP prices...

[Nightfire]

Might wanna do a search at http://www.webhostingtalk.com for what you're after plenty of good hosts knockin around there

[lavalamp]

Check out unitedhosting.co.uk, they look like a pretty decent host, they have help forums and you get MySQL databases and PHP support from £5/month.

[Nightfire]

Yeah they're good. Best host I've found so far.