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What is WP-ViperGB?

WP-ViperGB is a Wordpress plugin designed to replicate the appearance and behavior of the discontinued Viper Guestbook project. It makes it easy to add a stylish and user-friendly guestbook to your blog.

Features:

• Create user-friendly guestbooks without writing a single line of code.
• Lives in a standard Wordpress page and uses comments for entries, so moderation and antispam functionality works as normal.
• Two-View layout provides one view for submitting entries and another for reading them.
• Automatic paging of entries to customizable length.
• Show icons for country, browser, and OS in visitor signatures.
• Admin-panel stylesheet selector allows easy skinning to suit your theme.
• No bloat: Uses existing Wordpress faculties so no custom database tables are required.
• Simple PHP template function allows programmers to manually embed guestbooks in any template.

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Demo

The Guestbook page of this site is a live example of WP-ViperGB in action. Please do not use my personal guestbook to test this script; If you would like to test it, you can do so on your own server. Entries like "This is a test" will be caught in moderation and/or promptly deleted.

Here are screenshots of the two skins I include by default (the only difference is the color scheme):

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Installation

1. Download the latest version from here, unzip it, and upload the extracted files to your plugins folder.
2. Login to your Wordpress admin panel and activate the plugin.
3. Create a new Page (i.e. "Guestbook").
4. Navigate to Settings -> WP-ViperGB.
5. Use the provided dropdown to select the Page you created above.
6. Click "Save," and you're done! You can now enjoy your new guestbook.

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Customization

Skins

WP-ViperGB supports simple skin selection via its admin panel. For now, skins are just stylesheets (and images they reference); this can be expanded later if demand warrants.

To create a new skin, add a stylesheet to the WP-ViperGB/styles folder and override anything you like from Default.css, which will always be included first. Stylesheets in this directory will be listed by name in the "Guestbook Styles" combobox on the admin panel. I've only included two simple examples, but if anyone makes any cool new styles please share them, I'd love to include them with the plugin for others :)

Options

All of the guestbook's customization options are listed in its admin panel. These currently include:

• Number of entries to show per page
• Reverse order (list from oldest to newest)
• Disallow anonymous signatures (to discourage spammers)
• Use Digg-style pagination (vs "simple" paging)
• Show browser & OS icons
• Show flag icons

PHP Templates / Multiple Guestbooks

By default, WP-ViperGB lives in the "the_content" section of your theme's standard page template. If you would like to manually include it elsewhere, you can use the PHP function vgb_GetGuestbook(), like this:

<?php
/**
  * Template Name: MyTemplate
  */
get_header();
get_sidebar();

if( function_exists('vgb_GetGuestbook') )
    echo vgb_GetGuestbook();
else
    echo "Guestbook is currently deactivated.";

get_footer();
?>

Note that I did not call comments_template(); WP-ViperGB uses page comments for its entries, so including the standard comments template would result in your guestbook entries being shown twice. Also note that vgb_GetGuestbook() must be called inside The Loop - so if you use it in some nonstandard location, make sure to call the_post() first.

All of the options you find in the admin panel can be specified directly to this function, except for the style (because it needs to enqueue a stylesheet before wp_head):

<?php
vgb_GetGuestbook( array(
        'entriesPerPg'  => 10,       //Number of entries to show per page
        'reverseOrder'  => false,    //Show newest entries first
        'showBrowsers'  => true,     //Show visitor browser/OS icons  
        'showFlags'     => true,     //Show visitor flags (Requires Ozh IP2Nation)
        'disallowAnon'  => true),    //Prevent anonymous signatures
        'diggPagination'=> true);    //Use Digg-style pagination
?>

Thus, you can use this function to add multiple guestbooks to a given blog if you like.

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FAQ

1. My guestbook is getting overloaded with spam.
This plugin simply provides a "guestbook-like presentation" for regular Wordpress comments; if you're having problems with comment spam, I suggest trying out one of the many antispam plugins that are already available. Personally, I use a combination of Akismet, Bad Behavior, and SI CAPTCHA.

2. When attempting to sign the guestbook, I get 'Sorry, comments are closed for this item.'
Under Pages->All Pages in your admin panel, edit the page that's being used for your guestbook, and make sure 'Allow comments' is checked in the 'Discussion' box.

3. When anonymous visitors sign the guestbook, they get 'Sorry, you must be logged in to post a comment.'
Under Settings->Discussion in your admin panel, uncheck 'Users must be registered and logged in to comment.'

4. Is it possible to include images in the guestbook entries, like on the original Viper Guestbook?
Although this plugin used to allow image uploads, the 3rd party code I was utilizing turned out to have some vulnerabilities. In order to keep my plugin online, I had to remove the insecure code. If you're really eager to have photo uploads you can still download v1.1.30 from Wordpress.org, though obviously it's 'use at your own risk.'

5. I've enabled the option to show flags and installed Ozh's IP To Nation, but flags still don't appear.
100% of the times this has been reported, the issue was an incorrect setup of IP To Nation. Please carefully follow Ozh's setup instructions.

100. Something else isn't working as you've described!
Improperly coded themes and conflicting plugins are two of the most common sources of error, so if you're confident you've followed the directions above and something still isn't working, please try it again with all other plugins disabled and with the default Wordpress theme. If that works, you should be able to pinpoint the source of the issue by reactivating them one at a time.

101. How can I get personalized help with this plugin?
As described in the following section, I'm unfortunately no longer able to offer free one-on-one support for this free plugin. If I'm directing you to this FAQ, it probably means that you e-mailed me directly or posted a personal question below, disregarding the information under "Feedback/Support." Please read that section for a full explanation of my current support policy.

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Donate

Many hours have gone into developing & maintaining this plugin, far beyond my own personal needs. If you find it useful, a donation would be greatly appreciated.

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Feedback/Support

So, you've setup the plugin and it isn't doing what you expect. What now? The first thing you should try is disabling all your other plugins and using the default theme; broken themes and conflicting plugins are by far the most common cause of problems. If that works, you should be able to pinpoint the source of the issue by reactivating them one at a time.

Still no joy? If you need personal help, you can get paid support by donating at least $20USD to the author:


You may then email me your question directly and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.