Create a Family Website...free!

Recently I have been working on creating a few family websites. One each for my mother's & father's sides of the family and one for my husband's relatives. I thought this would be a great way to reconnect & keep in touch with the relatives I basically only see at funerals. So I fumbled my way around a few sites (I am by no stretch of the imagination a web designer) and settled on merging two sites.(more on them below) I am for the most part done with one. The others will be easier because I can copy & paste the finished site onto the other ones & then just edit the personal info.

My sites are private,for members only, but in order to publish an RSS feed I had to make the homepage available to readers. On these sites besides posting photos you can leave comments, start discussions,add files, chat, blog, leave notes and create groups on whatever topics interest you.

I decided on a Shutterfly's Share Site as my main site. It is incredible easy to navigate and set up. No knowledge of html is needed if you want to add videos or widgets/gadgets you just copy & paste. Member may add & edit content based on the owners (you!) preferences. You may also choose to receive email updates on new activity. There is an informative help section & sample sites to guide you. You can create a site just to for your immediate family members or a group. In order to participate on the site you must be a member of Shutterfly..it's free & you'll find many already belong.

*Actually Shutterfly helps here to: enter you your email account & they will check off those with accounts (not to worry they don't store your email info).

I am also halfway through a Shutterfly site for The Fabulous Adventures of Beanz & Bou.....stay tuned!

I have also linked the Family site to one on Ning. There you can create your own social networking site on any subject. This site works somewhat like Myspace & Facebook giving everyone their own personal profile page to customize along with areas for members to add & edit photos & such. I did find it a little frustrating going back & forth to edit pages but it isn't difficult. I mainly decided to keep the Ning site linked to the Shutterfly one because of the ability to add groups & so eveyone can create their on profile page. I am considering creating a social network site on Ning when I am finished with the family ones.

I also made (but decided not to use) a site at MyFamily.com.
This is also a great site and I may have gone with only it had I not worked so hard on the other ones before discovering it (and before I sent out invitations to join the other ones) **Lesson form me...thoroughly go through the sites you are considering & create a little something on all of them to see what best suits your family & make your choice and then...and only then send out the invites. All the sites are free so try them all.

*MyFamily does offer an upgraded version for $29 a year which isn't bad if you only have one site (different members can pay each year) but the free versions offers a great deal.

I'll be happy to help you out if I can.