As the economy improves (as I'm told it's doing), we resume hiring in the web field. I've always struggled weeding out good talent until several years ago when I started using the "Guestbook Test". It's fairly simple - if I tell a potential hire to build me a guestbook and give them a certain period of time to do it in, what do I get from them?

Considerations:

This is, of course, a mostly subjective test, but a lot of insight can be gained and used in comparing candidates for a developer position. I typically look at the following areas:

• Design
  Did the candidate implement any design elements to the project or just dump out some raw HTML?  I'm not looking for some graphical masterpeice here - rather a little bit of flare to make the system more intersting to a user.
• Architecture
  How well is the code put together? Did the candidate use functions/classes (if OO) to handle actions and seperate them from the flow of the system? Is the code commented so when I review it I know where things are an what they do? How is the file structure - are there external CSS/JS files to keep the system clean and easily portable?
• User interface, validation, and effects
  When I submit an entry does it relod the whole page or use AJAX/JS to submit and then display the users submission and a 'Success' message? Is there validation for the 'email' field? What extra steps did the candidate take to make what is normally a boring system and make it run smoothly for the end-user?
• The 'Wow' factor
  Did the candidate think outside the box? Is it a typical I/O system, or is there something that leads me to believe the person took some time to develop a solution that not only acheived my requirements, but exceeded them.

Why a guestbook?

Why not? A Guestbook (as outdated as it may be) can demonstrate a candidates ability to handle user input, data output, validation, user interface, data transformation and many other factors that are implemented in many applications.