website hosting

Every Family Should Have a Website
By: Jeff Hoffman

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 isnt necessarily how it needs to be these days.

Today in this world of instant everything your family and friends shouldnt 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 dont 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 Nemos. That picture although very memorable at first

glance gets filed away in someones 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 dont 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 minivan your friends can make

fun of the fact that you actually bought a minivan 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 bobbyyourlastname.com or similar.

Although email is a great way to communicate there are also other ways. You can

setup a secure or password protected calendar which could be public or private.

You can setup 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 autoinstaller 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 setup 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.

Jeff Hoffman is president of Doozy Website Hosting a professional website hosting

provider specializing in small business and family website hosting services. Jeff is also

an award winning website designer and multi media specialist with over 9 years

experience. You can contact Jeff by visiting his companys website at http://www.doozyhosting.com for more details.