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.
  • Allow users to upload and embed images in their signatures.
  • 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.

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):

style-dark style-light

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.

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:
  • Reverse order (list from oldest to newest)
  • Number of entries to show per page
  • Allow image uploads (disabled by default)
  • Max image filesize (if image uploads are enabled)
  • 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
        'allowUploads' => true,     //Allow users to upload images
        'maxImgSizKb'  => 50,       //Max uploadable image size
        'showBrowsers' => true,     //Show visitor browser/OS icons  
        'showFlags'    => true));   //Show visitor flags (Requires Ozh IP2Nation)
?>
Thus, you can use this function to add multiple guestbooks to a given blog if you like.


Although this plugin is free to use and enjoy, it did not write itself. If you find it useful, a glass, pitcher, or keg of beer for the author would be greatly appreciated. I promise to enjoy every ounce of it :)

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:

Donate Here For Paid Support

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

If you'd like to get in touch for a non support-related reason (i.e. feedback, job requests, feature suggestions, unrelated rants), you may use the comment thread below, but please remember that I will no longer be replying to requests for free support. I'm sorry to do this (I avoided it for well over a year), but due to the overwhelming stream of questions for my various (opensource) plugins I can simply no longer afford to offer my time for free.

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