How to Create a Family Website

While many of us have a circle of friends and coworkers that we interact with regularly, for most people, the family is where people connect most deeply. But families are growing increasingly apart in this day and age with immediate family members busy with their own schedules and extended family being separated by many miles. Increasingly, many families are creating family websites to help increase communication, plan events like a reunion and have fun. We're going to show you how to create your own family website using Qlubb, an easy to use group website that takes less than a minute to set up.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. 
    

   Create Your Own Family Website
   
   Creating your own family's space is a great way to centralize information. If you use just email, you will soon find that information gets fragmented and it's hard to know who has the latest information. More useless emails tend to flow around when there isn't a central place for people to disseminate information. With a central website you can publish a family calendar so everyone knows what everyone else is doing and also what the future events are.
   
   
   Go to www.qlubb.com and create a Qlubb for your own family.
   By creating a central website, like http://smithfamily.qlubb.com everyone knows where to get on the same page.
   
   What's key is to have a secure site that has an open administration model. By enabling family members to contribute easily and frequently - otherwise the most tech person is stuck with making all of the edits.

2. 
    

   Create your Own Family Email Address
   
   One of the most convenient first steps in improving family communication is creating a group email.
   
   Qlubb automatically creates and email list for you. With a group email list, you can send one email to [e-mail] and every person in the family gets the email. You don't have to type in everybody's email address every time and in addition, you can let the family members manage their email addresses themselves - like for instance if they change their email address.

3. 
    

   Shared To Do List
   
   Whether planning who has what chores to do, or who is doing what for the upcoming family reunion, shared to-do lists (or shared sign up sheets) are a great way to do the planning up front and to assign responsibilities. With shared sign up sheets, Qlubb can lay out all the steps and tasks for everyone to see and for people to sign up or assign others as needed. Qlubb also has automatic email reminders that can "nag" people to get things done. Shared to-do lists help coordinate activities much better than traditional paper and pen or even email.

4. 
    

   Photo Sharing
   
   Sharing the photos from the latest vacation trip or graduation is a great way to keep the family engaged and excited. Being able to tie photos to specific events help people find the photo albums quickly and easily that they want to view. Qlubb has built-in photo sharing and presents the photos as a slideshow which helps photo viewing become more interesting and interactive. Comments on photos also add to the fun.

5. 
    

   File Sharing
   
   When coordinating, it's hard to know who has the latest version of the file. By keeping it in a central location everyone knows where the latest is. Also, putting backups of important files on the Web, in a secure location is a good idea in general.

Resources

• Qlubb - free and easy family websites