Before the Internet the best ways to stay connected with your family and friends, was by telephone, family reunions, and the Christmas newsletter, which recapped the year. This isn’t necessarily how it needs to be these days.
Today in this world of instant everything, your family and friends shouldn’t have to wait to hear that Samantha went on her first date, and that Bobby caught his first fish in that annual newsletter. You can publish this information on your own family website.
I know what your thinking, I don’t need a website to tell Grandma that Bobby caught a fish, I can call her on the phone, or better yet I can send her an email, with a picture of Bobby and little Nemo. Everyone, even Grandma has email these days and I find it very convenient and thoughtless to send out an email to everyone.
Yes, I agree email is very convenient and anyone can get a free account these days. But lets think about that picture you attached in the message, what happens to that priceless picture of Bobby holding up his fishing pole with a big proud smile on his face and the look of shock in Nemo’s. That picture although very memorable at first glance, gets filed away in someone’s inbox and forgotten or worse deleted.
Now imagine storing that picture on your family website, your own personal online photo album (known as a gallery). You know after a while of uploading pictures to your family website, you now have a family history which you can go back to and enjoy forever. You don’t have to worry about losing all of your photos in a fire or if Fido decides to eat those pictures like he did with your homework in sixth grade.
Family website are not just about pictures but also about stories and communication. Adding a daily journal (known as a blog) will keep everyone up to date on the latest and greatest accomplishments of Samantha and Bobby which you did not happen to capture with your digital camera. What is great about Blogs are that after you tell everyone about how Samantha made you place that “Honor Student of the Week” sticker on your brand new mini-van, your friends can make fun of the fact that you actually bought a mini-van in the comments section for that post.
Communication is also a valuable asset of a family website. Along with the benefits of having giving Samantha and Bobby their own email address, which by the way you can manage, you can also give Grandma and Uncle Fred their own email addresses also. There really is no reason why the whole family cannot have an email address like “bobby@yourlastname.com” or similar.
Although email is a great way to communicate there are also other ways. You can set-up a secure or password protected calendar, which could be public or private. You can set-up everyone you want with their personal calendar and have them all sync into a main family calendar. Imagine your spouse keeping track of the kids’ appointments so you can just glance at today and know you have to pick up Bobby from his new anglers meeting at 5:30.
Now you may think that you could never possibly afford or have the technical skills to do all of this on your own, well you are wrong. If you find a website hosting provider who allows you to install open source software, all of these applications are available to you free of charge. You can get a free blog, gallery and calendar set up in no time. Here is a hint, when looking for a website hosting provider look for one that offers “Fantastico”. Fantastico is a very good auto-installer of open source software, and is very easy to use. If you would rather not bother doing the install ask your website hosting provider to install these applications for you. In most cases they will for a small set-up fee or they may even do it for free.
Having a family website can be a fun and rewarding experience which may end up being an indispensable part of your day to day activities. Not only will your family website encourage communication between your friends and family but it will also serve as a way to keep all of those precious moments alive for a very long time.
