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. These days, it’s not necessarily necessary to do things this way.
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 Baby Nemo and Bobby. Everyone, even Grandma has email these days and
Sending an email to everyone seems both very practical and careless to me.
Email is definitely very practical, and these days anyone can sign up for a free account.
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
Similar to when he ate your sixth-grade homework, Fido decides to eat those pictures.
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.
A family website should emphasize communication. 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 [email protected] or similar.
Even though email is a fantastic tool for communication, there are still other options. 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.