Dear Tech In-Law,
I want to build a web page for my family. Something for the rest of my family to be able to go to and keep up with the current goings-ons in the family. Nothing too crazy, but maybe something I can add to and make better as I go. Any suggestions? I would like to have my own address, and with very little advertising, although I know it may be necessary.
Marc


Hey Marc,
Great! Using a site like this to journal your family activities and pictures is a great way to keep in touch with relatives and friends who might not live nearby. There are actually lots of options out there for you and I will try to stick with the most well-known as they should offer what you are looking for.

First off, if you already have an account at either Google or Yahoo, you might be happy enough with what those two services provide. For Yahoo, they integrated with flickr which was mostly just a way to post photos online quickly and share them with friends. You can set up a group of family and friends who are all connected. Since you will have control over who you send the invitations to, it will be easy to control the privacy. If any of them happen to have a flickr account already you just send them the invite. If they do not have a flickr account, they do not have to set one up - you can simply create a guest pass to them that is good for as long as you want it to be good for. Anyway, if it's just the pictures you are mostly interested in, something like a flickr account will work great!

Google has a similar offering with their Picasa Web Albums tool. You have the same type of features available as with the flickr account, so in case some of your family is already using Google accounts, you might find this an easy way to get started.

If you are looking for more than just the pictures and brief commentary, you could always use a site like Blogger and set up a family blog, but if you are planning on posting pictures and would like some password protection, you might be better off with an alternative. Blogger does allow you to turn off the public view and allow only certain readers of your choosing to view the site, but in order to do so they will all have to sign in with a Google account, so it's a little cumbersome. Here are a few more options to consider:

Livejournal does allow you to have a private blog and offers you plenty of options to get started with a "basic" free account. There will be some advertising involved and there are several paid levels you can review in case there is a level that better suits your needs.

Myfamilysite is a similar site that is centered around families might also be worth checking into. Again, the free site is based around advertising but you might find that the ads are acceptable and that the free site meets your needs.

If you happen to be a Mac user, you can also take advantage of the great iLife applications included with your computer and use their .Mac service to publish your site. There is an annual cost associated with the service but the tightly integrated and easy to use applications that integrate with iLife make them worth a look!

Hope this at least gives you a headstart and some ideas on where to begin. My advice is to go ahead and create an account without sending it out to your family at first. Just play around with all the tools and settings and see if you think it will meet your needs. If so, go ahead and spread the word. If not, no loss since these are free and you can simply start up another service and compare the features. Good luck and happy blogging!