Topic Web Site for family

impilcature

I have been thinking of making a family website for my parents. They have about eight grandkids and two on the way. I was thinking of using one of the family website packages that are specifically for this. I am not familiar with running my own site but I believe I will be a fast learner. If any of you use any sites like that please let me know what you think. If I commit to one what are some things i will need to look out for.

Here is the anticipated usage:

Private log ins
about 20 or so accts with or without email.
picture hosting with a lot of DLs
user learning curve needs to be easy as we will have many un savvy users.
Maintenance a minimum.
I would like to make it so that one family cannot mess with another family's page.

Thanks
-imp-

Riddar

1&1 might be decent hosting for you. The hosting is dirt cheap and includes the price of a .com (or any other extension) domain name. Bandwidth and hosting space is way more than you will need, 10 gigs and 300 gigs monthly on the lowest pack. Comes with a few hundred email accounts for the domains.

Either set up a site on that hosting with logins as you desire (if you want to learn), or take the easy path and just set it up as an FTP server and teach them how to login and browse, which should be pretty easy to do. With the FTP route, you lack a nice GUI, but you get separate folders, password protection, restriction to certain folders, and all that stuff.

-HAL-

I really don't recommend using 1&1 since I've heard nothing but bad things about them (especially their domain registration program..)

One other cheap and easy to use host I've tested before is Globat.com
They offer free domain and a very easy to use control panel where you can install the scripts you need like photo galleries, site builder etc.
http://www.globat.com/products/terabyte_xtreme.htm

Riddar

I think I might have had trouble transferring a domain TO someone (I gave it to him to take... but he had terrible communication and I wasn't overly interested in the process). He ended up giving up, it seems. I don't know if that's on 1&1 or his own failure though.

Other than that, I can't complain. The site has a few occasional slowdowns and they overdo the junk mail, but it is half the price and someone always answers the phone. Good value, of nothing else.

impilcature

HMMM.... I went with Globat. I now own my own domain (i think that is what i should call it). I have my Dreamweaver fired up and an online tutorial open on the next tab over. Thanks for the feedback and the reccomendations. i will keep you all posted and may ask for a little guidance here and there. thanks again!!

impilcature

Well i have played around for a few days looking at the different things that i can do in Dreamweaver with out any training. I am looking for feedback or advice on a simple language or techniques to use on my first website attempt. Any suggestions or directions to a good tutorial would be greatly appreciated. I don't have a good graphics editor at this point so any suggestions would be appreciated. The cheaper the better.

-HAL-

Have you tested the Globat sitebuilder??
Haven't tried it myself but it's supposed to be very easy to use..
There are also a couple of gallery scripts available in the Globat control panel, including the Coppermine Photo Gallery

harvcr

I was also thinking about creating a website to communicate with my family and friends exclusively and after doing some research of the topic I concluded that the best way to do this is to set up a forum website like this one or to built one with Wiki code.
I haven't done it yet though.

impilcature

The site builder offers very generic outlines that are so bland i don't want to use them. I am still playing around with the pages and saw a review of another site in this forum... Instead of making the "site" picture heavy i was thinking (like harvcr) of making some sort of posting page. I still am working on how to do this exactly. The FAQs and HOW TOs for Globat aren't very noob friendly but as with anything else in life it takes time to learn.

I will keep you posted. Thanks

flipax

Hi!

You might want to try social networking type scripts instead. There's aroundme by barnraiser and elgg. Aroundme has a built-in forum script while elgg interface with forum scripts like Vanilla.