Manage messages
It is your guestbook, so you decide what stays on it. Everything below lives in the Control Panel, mostly under Messages, and changes the public page immediately.
The message list
The list shows all messages or only the Public, Private, Pending, Hidden or Trash ones, ten per page. For each message you see the name, e-mail address, date, country flag, your custom fields, the text, the status and the IP address it was posted from, with an IP lookup link and a "Block IP" link right next to it. Two buttons do the work: Delete Message (after a confirmation) and Edit Message.
Edit anything, change the status
Edit Message lets you correct a name, an e-mail address, the location, a custom field or the message text itself, and set the status: Public, Private, Pending Approval, Hidden or Trash. Hidden and Trash take a message off the public page without deleting it, so you can put it back later.
Approve before publishing
Tick Approve new messages under Settings › Guestbook Options and new posts wait as Pending until you set them to Public. The Control Panel's Home page tells you how many are waiting, and you can be e-mailed each time one arrives. This is the calmest setting for a guestbook that gets a few messages a week.
Private messages
With private messages enabled, the sign form gets a "Private" checkbox. A private message is shown only to you in the Control Panel; the public page merely notes that a private message was added, and when.
Notifications and the mail log
Under Settings › Email Notification you choose to be e-mailed at once about new public messages and, separately, about private messages and messages waiting for approval. The mail comes from notification@ultraguest.com, carries the message text, and can be switched off with one click. A log in the Control Panel lists the notifications we sent, so you can check whether one went out, and no guestbook gets more than five notification mails a day, so a busy day cannot flood your inbox.
Your data stays yours
Account › Download My Data gives you everything as JSON, or the messages alone as CSV for a spreadsheet, whenever you like. Settings › Download › E-mails lists the e-mail addresses your visitors left, as a text file. Every guestbook also has an RSS feed of its latest ten public messages, and Account › Statistics shows the number of messages, unique visitors and page views.