Yeah, it's a dumb name.

What it does is provide a free, remotely-hosted, XHTML-compliant (by default), CSS-friendly "shoutbox" or "tagboard" for your website, kinda like the guestbook of old, but more short-term/conversation oriented. It's a pretty dumb feature — did you want one? — but after seeing a few sites that use one and digging into how it was being done, I thought it was kind of interesting and figured I could do better. And I was bored.

The way it works, see, is that you register and login. Once logged in, you clickety-click some forms to create a shoutbox. Then you add a line or two of HTML to your website where you want the shoutbox to appear. Via the miracles of the hypertext transport protocol, it will magically appear on your web site! If you want, you can read the details or check out some examples but this isn't rocket science.

This service doesn't host sites, so you have to provide your own. All it provides is some HTML chunks that you can include into your web pages. If this sounds mysterious to you, then maybe the help page might shed some light. On the other hand, if you're apt to get angry because something breaks or messages get lost, then go away.


Use the form below to login to manage your shoutboxes, or to register. A working email is required for registration confirmation, so don't fake one.

Email Address*:
* If you're logging in, you can leave this blank.


050326: Small tweak to make shoutmaru better behaved with non-English character sets. May break stuff. Email me if you have problems.

040322: Release

A box like this on your site!

Valid XHTML 1.0!