All questions and answers on the same page

 Backups

 Can I restore deleted messages?

 What kind of backups do you support?

Answer: We perform scheduled backup jobs to protect your data.

Our most popular function is the trash bin where the latest deleted messages are kept.

 General

 Can I get support from you?

 Can I still use this service after 25:th of May 2018 in regards to GDPR?

Answer: Yes, you can. Just make sure you inform your visitors about which data you save or process.

The General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR, is a European legislation to protect the privacy and personal information of individuals living in the European Union. As a European company we follow GDPR.

We will act as data controller for the data we manage about you as a customer or visitor. If you use our services to manage any data for your customers or visitors, then you are the data controller and we are the data processor for this data.

Read more about GDPR in our Privacy and Data Protection Policy.

 Can I use this guestbook outside USA?

Answer: Yes, you can use our service in any country as long as your website and messages are in any of our supported languages.

 How do you keep spam out of my guestbook?

Answer: We have multiple layers of spam detection in order to protect your guestbook. We use open spam lists (surbl.org, ahbl.org, ...) and special filters and pattern databases to detect spam messages.

Also, we have a strong and alert abuse team which will do the best to keep your guestbook clean from malicious users and spam.

 How many messages can my guestbook hold?

Answer: There is a limit of 5,000 messages for all guestbooks. Once you have reached the limit your guestbook will be locked for new messages and an alert email will be sent to you. You may however start as many new guestbooks as you like.

 How secure is your service?

Answer: Our service is very reliable. We have been hosting free guestbooks since 1999 and have never had any major problems with downtime or data losses.

Our service is very robust and we use multiple servers at different locations around the world. We also have technicians monitoring our servers 24/7.

 I can't validate my website after I inserted the link to my guestbook?

Answer: The guestbook link is designed to be used in HTML documents only.

However, you can easily change the link to your guestbook so it validates as XML/XHTML by replacing all & with & and make sure all tags have an trailing / before >. Read more about this here.

 Is this service really free?

Answer: Yes, this service is 100% free and will always remain so. Our business model is to show relevant ads in the guestbook.

If you want to remove the ads we offer a premium service without any ads.

 What is a Guestbook?

Answer: An online guestbook is a web service that enables visitors to add comments to a web page.

By adding a guestbook to your site you will encourage your visitors to come back, over and over again. Also, you can get valuable feedback from your visitors. For more information, take a look at our demo tour.

 Which character encodings do you support?

Answer: We support all character encodings, including US, European, Cyrillic, Chinese and Japanese.

 Which languages are your service translated into?

Answer: Our user interface is translated into the following languages: English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Chinese (both traditional and simplified), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Slovak, Swedish and Turkish.

 Why do my visitors get a warning saying my guestbook is not secure?

Answer: Since late 2017 some browsers (including Google Chrome) have started showing security warning on all website loaded via HTTP that has an input field on it (which your guestbook has).

You can fix this by switching over to HTTPS (SSL) but you will need to upgrade to a premium account first. Then just change http:// into https:// in your guestbook link from your website.

If you already are a premium user and embedding the guestbook with an iframe onto your site, then you have to contact your hosting provider so they also upgrade your entire website to HTTPS. This is not necessary if you are just linking your guestbook from your website, which most users are.

 Security

 Can I block a user from my guestbook?

 Can I trace a person who has posted a message?

Answer: In most cases you can not trace the user. However, if there has been a really ugly incident, there is a good chance that the user's Internet Service Provider can help you after you have submitted an abuse report. In order to identify the person you will need to provide the IP address and exact time and timezone for the event.

You will find the unique IP address for the user after you have logged in to the administration, in the section Manage messages. You can also trace the ISP responsible for the IP address in that section.

 Can you help me change password or email for my account?

Answer: This can only be done from your guestbook administration area. First log in and then choose Personal settings in order to change email or Security settings to set a new password.

Please note that for security reasons we will not be able to change any password or email address for you. If you have forgotten your password and changed your email without updating it in the administration area your acocunt will be lost.

 Settings

 Can I change settings so I have to approve a message before it is published?

 Can I get a notification after a new message has been posted?

Answer: Sure, after you have logged in to the administration, choose the section Personal settings. You can set up to 6 different notification email addresses.

 Can I insert my logo or a background image?

Answer: Yes, no problem. First log in.

In order to insert a logo or image at top of your guestbook, choose General settings / Display from the main menu and then edit your welcome message so your logo is inserted.

To insert a background image, choose Design settings (advanced mode) from the main menu.

You can only use gif, jpg or png image files and you have to make sure that you enter a full and correct URL in order for the image to be shown. Also, your hosting provider can not use a feature called hotlinking protection.

 Can I use more than one language in my guestbook?

Answer: Yes, you can use any of our 25+ supported languages in your guestbook.

First log in and then choose the section General settings to set the standard language.

You can also override the language setting and use multiple languages in your guestbook by adding &l=X to your guestbook address, where X is the code for the language:
1=English, 2=Swedish, 3=Spanish, 4=Portuguese (Brazilian), 5=French, 7=Italian, 6=German, 8=Dutch, 9=Turkish, 10=Chinese (simplified), 11=Chinese (traditional), 12=Russian, 13=Japanese, 14=Hungarian, 15=Bulgarian, 16=Danish, 17=Norwegian, 18=Finnish, 19=Polish, 20=Croatian, 21=Slovak, 22=Czech, 23=Hebrew, 24=Korean, 25=Portuguese (European), 26=Greek, 27=Arabic, 28=Catalan and 29=Serbian.

 How do I add smilies to my guestbook?

Answer: When entering a smiley code like :-) it will be converted into after the message has been posted.

You can change a few settings for how smilies are shown. First log in and then choose General settings / Display from the main menu.

 How do I change my contact information such as name and email for my account?

Answer: You can change all contact information in the administration. Log in and then choose the section Personal settings.

 How do I change settings for the offensive word or spam filter?

Answer: Log in and then choose Security settings from the main menu.

 How do I change settings or design?

Answer: Log in and then choose Design settings from the main menu.

 How do I change title for the guestbook?

Answer: First log in and then choose the section General settings / Display.

 How do I reply to a message?

Answer: Log in and then choose Manage messages from the main menu.

 How do you handle daylight saving time (summer time)?

Answer: Daylight saving time (DST or known as summer time in EU) is hard to handle correct for all users since many countries and regions have locally decided to use their own rules.

For users in EU and US we should be able to handle it correct without any need for the user to manually change time settings. This include the current US update according to the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Also, users in regions that do not have daylight saving time at all (most regions in Asia and Africa) will also be ok. They have to make sure that the option 'Automatically adjust time when daylight saving time' in the administration (General settings) is turned off.

However, all other users (such as users from South America or Australia) will have to manually change time settings two times a year in the administration.

 I enter the correct password but I can not log in, why?

Answer: This is probably a browser problem. Just restart your browser or computer and then go to the log in screen and try again.

The problem might also be due to a proxy or chaching software (like Google Desktop) on your computer. You can try to disable all extra software and restart your browser and then try again.

 I have lost my password or guestbook URL. Can you help me?

Answer: You can get all your account information sent to your email from the bottom of this page.

 I use frames and when I press the 'Back to my website' link at the bottom I get all of my website loaded within the frame, can I fix this?

Answer: Yes, you can. Just change your website address (URL) to the exact address that should be loaded in the frame when you press the back link.

You can change your website address in the section Personal settings.

 I would like to show more (or less) than 10 messages per page, can I?

Answer: No problem. First log in and then choose the section General settings / Display.

You could also fix it by just adding &m=X at the end of your guestbook address, where X is changed to the numbers of message you would like to show.

 Sign up

 Can you help me setup multiple accounts at the same time?

Also, if you are interested in our ad-free account type we can offer you a 20% discount if you sign up for more than 10 premium accounts at a time.

 How many guestbooks can I register?

Answer: You can register one guestbook per email address and week. It is ok to have multiple guestbook accounts.

If you need more than a few accounts we can help you setup multiple accounts.

 I did not get any activation code by email after I signed up, why?

Answer: Please make another try and submit your registration form again, making sure you enter your correct email address.

The mail will instantly be sent from our servers but your email provider may wait to deliver the mail to you. If you have not received an activation code within an hour, your email provider may have some kind of problem with their network, servers or spam filter.

You can also try to add our email support@smartgb.com to your address book, safe list or white list.

Unfortunately our support team will not be able to assist you any further.

 What HTML-code can I use to insert my guestbook on my website?

Answer: You can find your HTML-code in the administration area. Go to the section called Setup Guestbook instructions.

 What kind of skills do I need to install my guestbook?

Answer: It is very easy to install your guestbook. After the registration, you will receive a simple URL to our server where your guestbook is located. Just insert this URL as a link on your website and your guestbook will be ready to be used.

We do also provide a complete set of HTML-tags for you to copy and paste into your website.

 When will my guestbook be ready to use?

Answer: Your guestbook will go online instantly after you have signed up and activated your account via email.

 Sponsoring ads

 Can I pay you to remove the ads in my guestbook?

 Do you accept other payment methods than PayPal?

Answer: We are sorry but currently we do not offer any other payment methods.

We recommend that you consider sending the payment via Paypal since it is the most used payment gateway in the world. It is completely free for you to open an account and the payment will be sent via a secure channel.

 Will you place adult or any other offensive content in my guestbook?

Answer: No, our policy is to show interesting ads. We use the Google Adsense ad network and they guarantee that no offensive or sexual content will be shown in the ads since they (and we) do not accept such content.

Also, we will not show any popup or flash banners.

 Unspecified

 Can I import old messages from my previous guestbook?

A better solution might be to upload the content from your old guestbook as a static HTML-file to your host and just link it from your website, like an guestbook archive for old messages.

 Do you offer any other free services?

Answer: Yes, we offer a few other webmaster tools for free.

 How do I delete my account?

Answer: Log in and then choose Security settings / Manage account from the main menu. Please note that our support team can not delete the account for you.

 I have been blocked from your service. Can you help me?

Answer: In order to protect our users from spam and other abuse related activity we have setup our system to block users conducting suspicious activities (such as many log in failures or sending multiple messages stopped by our spam filter).

Each month we are handling millions of connections and several hundred thousand new messages. Sometimes our filter functions are wrong, we are sorry if this is the case. We are always trying to improve our filters.

We also let our users set their own blockings. This means that they can block any IP for any reason at any time.

If you have a guestbook account with us that you need to manage, you may request a blocking removal. Go to the administration area (don't remember the URL?) of your guestbook and follow the instructions. Your request will automatically be handled by our system within seconds.

The alternative is to wait a few hours or in some cases a few days until the blocking is removed.

Note that our support team can not and will not remove any blockings for any IP address, no matter of the circumstances, or give you any additional information about why someone was blocked.

 Why don't you support my language?

Answer: Our technical platform, such as spam/language filter and 3:rd party ad network, is designed to support the following languages: English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Chinese (both traditional and simplified), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Lithuanian, Latvian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Slovak, Swedish, Thai, Turkish and Ukrainian.

We hope to extend this list in the future but can not give you any more information at this moment.

We are sorry but accounts with many messages (or a website) written in another language will be deleted.