10:00 am Friday 17th April 2026
Guestbook is currently down
There is currently an issue with the guestbook at the moment. If you go there and try to make a comment, it will just say “guestbook is loading” and it won't actually load. I have done some testing, and it seems to be server-side, and nothing to do with my code or anything like that. I also checked to see if it was my ISP, but using a VPN showed the same results of the guestbook refusing to load.
I'm unfortunately unable to log-in to the website that hosts the comments in the first place because the same server error that's causing the guestbooks to not load is the same error that makes it impossible for me to log in. Meaning all I have of the record of comments is the emails I was getting, notifying me of the comments. I kept all these emails so I have everyone's comments, thankfully. But I only have a few emails of the responses I gave back. At some point I started responding to every comment I received, and I didn't keep the emails of my responses since...well I didn't care as much about my own responses and was trying to delete emails I didn't need or care about since I wanted to save space in my inbox (I'm slowly running out of space). I managed to save a few from the trash, but the other responses I gave are just gone from my emails.
I have emailed Bawkbox (the provider of the comment box I use) to let them know of the issue and hopefully they see it and are able to fix the issue. The last comment I received on my guestbook was April 1st (Sydney time), so between then and now something must have broken. I do not know exactly how long it has been down for. It could have only been a few days, it could've been since April 1st shortly after I responded to that last comment (I responded on the same day). I'm not sure. I'll give it two weeks, and if nothing changes or I don't get a response back from Bawkbox, I will have to start working on my own, in-house comment section that is not third party but fully managed by me. I believe that sort of thing is only really possible with a subscription to neocities...but at this point it would be worth it, I think. I saw some code a while back that seemed pretty easy to figure out, and if it comes to it, I'll just use that code I saw. I'm just somewhat done with relying upon 3rd party tools that eventually shut down or break.
To those that wish to make comments, at this point and time you will have to comment on the actual Neocities profile, like what a few others have done in the past. This unfortunately means you must be a Neocities user and have your own website. I apologise deeply to those that do not have a Neocities account but do wish to make comments. The maximum amount of time that I should be without a guestbook that works will be a month (hopefully). I don't know how long it will take to get the code I need to work if I need to pivot to my own self-managed guestbook. But I will of course give updates to how long I think it will take if that does come to pass.
If at all I do need to pivot to my own tool, I will accumulate every comment from every place I've ever gotten a comment from (neocities profile comments, 123guestbook, htmlcommentbox) and put them in there, alongside new comments people decide to make.
