I love guestbooks.

There’s one on my site and it’s always a lovely feeling when someone drops by to leave a little note. I also do the same whenever I come across them.

Unlike comments, they are central to that page’s content. They invite the reader to leave a mark. A page of collaborative content, created by the audience.

The simplicity of the interface reduces the friction to contribute – couple of fields, no need to hand over email and a chance to advertise your own website if you wish.

So it got me thinking … can this interface be used in other ways to collaborate?

I’ve been experimenting with a few different ideas on my websites recently. The first was for the Artocalypse. This is a community of independent artists who come together to put on celebrations of art in a Expos a few times a year.

Each expo has a single visitor book, which appears under every exhibit, rather than buried away on another page. So very much like a traditional guest book, except there are multiple places where you get a chance to leave your thoughts. The 2024 artist feature gathered lots of feedback from visitors as a result.

Another example, which is a very different to the traditional guestbook use case, is to create collaborative content on very specific topics. I recently asked the question Why did you make a website and readers were able to submit their answers directly in the page using the guestbook interface.

And very recently, we used it to great effect for our current Poetry Expo. One of the activities is a Micro Poetry Jam, where we invite readers to submit a small verse, there and then on the spot.

And you guessed it – the guestbook interface was customised again to make the interactive input form and display of submissions.

I’d love to collect more examples of how guestbooks can be used to create engaging, interactive experiences on your website. Drop me an email on [email protected] if you come across any, or use them yourself.