I Reinstated My Guestbook After 20 Years!
2 days ago
- #guestbook
- #web-development
- #nostalgia
- The author reinstated the guestbook on their website after 20 years.
- The website started as an intranet portal in 2001–2005, running on Microsoft PWS and IIS, with guestbook data stored in an Access database.
- A public website subset also existed, using a CGI script for guestbook comments, which was vulnerable to XSS.
- After leaving university, the author created a new website but omitted the guestbook until June 2025.
- The new guestbook uses Common Lisp and Hunchentoot, with comments stored in text files and rendered as static HTML.
- Most original guestbook comments were lost due to disc rot, but some were recovered from other files and correspondence.
- A few comments from the old public website were also recovered.
- The new guestbook received unexpected positive feedback from visitors.