If you have a website of any kind, you may want to have a few guest books.
Though it will depend on the kind of site that you have, they can be a great way to get feedback from visitors.
You have to be careful with them, however, as there can be problems that crop up that you don't want to have on your site.
If you have a business, and you also have a visitors list, you do want to make sure you keep a close eye on what is going on each day.
Guest books are often provided free, and all you have to do is cut and paste the code you get.
You put it on your site and you have your very own guest books.
These can be simple, and you can often make them in any color or style you may want.
You then have access to moderate it.
This means that if someone comes along and leaves a nasty message, or if you are hit with spam, you can simply delete the entries.
Just remember that once the spammers find your guest books, you are going to have a hard time getting rid of them.
There are options for visitor lists that are being hit with spam.
You can switch to moderated mode, which means that you have to approve each message before it appears.
This can be a pain after a while though, and many people get sick of trying to keep up.
You can get guest books that have you enter a code before you can post in it.
Spammers will rarely mess with these types of guest books, and you won't have to worry about them too much.
If you find that your guest books are getting out of hand, you may have to remove them from your site all together.
There are people who just love to pick a fight, and they will do it anywhere they can.
You can look at it in two different ways.
You can leave the nonsense going because it does bring in traffic.
However, it may damage your business.
It's up to you if you want to leave it up or not.
An alternative might be to have a feedback form on your site for visitors.
That way you can still hear what people have to say without the headache of moderating a guest book.