The family that prays together stays together. Isn’t that cute? You see pictures of families going to church, celebrating the holidays. There are even a few of these photographs where the whole family went on a beach, had some fun time in Disneyland, and threw in a party for Junior. These and a lot of other stories are worth remembering.
Well, surprise, surprise. The Internet not only allows you online photo-sharing, blogging, and video-posting, but also brought these three (and other online features) together to bring you a revolution in online networking. Let’s meet some “Family Websites,” shall we?
First in line is FamilyLobby, where you can create your own family’s private website. Family friendly and easy to use, FamilyLobby has one goal in mind: to “help keep you and your family together, no matter how far apart you may be.”
Browsing through its sample websites, I can say that it can be easily personalized. For one, the website can contain links such us your family tree, journal, chatroom, and of course, photos and videos. Also, you can add in news and calendar of events of what your family might be into, and further remind them that you will be holding a party if the schedule slipped off their minds. Further, you can allow registry of other people who happen to pass by, acting as an online networking website, too. And lastly, it’s free!
Next up is MyFamily. Similar to the one above, MyFamily has these following features among others: What’s New (updates on the website), Photos, Videos, Trees, Events, and People (or contacts). Added to its long roster of features are Discussions, SnapGenie, and Files. Discussions seemingly act as the family’s online dinner chat, where stories and opinions travel across from different ends of the table. SnapGenie is a storyteller in a way. It allows recordings of people’s voices (via phone and Internet’s technology). You just type in your phone number as well as the number of the relative you are calling, and MyFamily will store your conversation for the rest of the family to hear, be it reminiscing the love between your grandparents, or a greeting from a loved one who happened to travel to a different country. The Files section is just it. You can store files for your family to download or look at.
MyFamily has three membership levels. First is, of course, the free level. After a year of using the website, you can see your videos and photos. However, it will take a while before you can access them. Paying $29.95 a year gives you a Gigabyte per month of storage for your files, be it a photo or a video, while paying $99.95 a year maximizes your storage to 10 Gigabytes per month, plus options to customize your website.
Third that I found is TheFamilyPost. It allows you to build a very flashy family website in an instant! It has a tabbed interface with contents like the other two, from photos to videos, calendar to history, to even a directory. To liven things up, it also included a My Kids tab to display personalized websites of your children, and a Newsletter and a Message Board tab to discuss things and update other relatives of the latest family info.
After a year of free trial, TheFamilyPost can allow you unlimited photos and videos once you become their premium member, for only $5.50 a month or $60.50 a year.
There are other family websites around. You can just go look for them in any search engine and see if it fits your need (they almost always allow photos, videos, calendar or events posting, and a journal). But please hear my advice. Don’t be blinded by showy or cleanly laid out pages. You should always check for the privacy policy of the website you are to register your family into. After all, it’s your family’s private memories that will be shared through it. Check user comments and demo sites of these websites, as you can get information on their privacy levels from them. And putting up family memorabilia doesn’t always mean that those will stay on the site forever. Try knowing how to take them down or delete them. This might help in cases where you don’t want to share things even with your relatives.
Finally, the Internet has a way to put your whole family in the virtual world. Just be a little watchful and secured, because it is your family that’s being registered in the cyberspace, not just you.
