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Todays busy families need a quick convenient way to keep everyone informed and make sure important announcements and birthdays don't get overlooked. Last month I created a family blog/website for my family. My brothers and I live in different states and I wanted a simple way to keep everyone in touch. I used a free Wordpress blog from Wordpress.com. These can be public or private. Since my family is kind of shy and I wanted everyone to use it, I created a private family blog, that only invited family members, can view or post to. I invited my parents, my 3 brothers, my Grandma, and Aunt and Uncle. Then I followed through and made sure everyone was signed up and on the list created by me to allow access.

With Wordpress you can assign everyone permissions, I gave everyone editor permission, and me and my most computer savvy brother are administrators. Wordpress is easy to use and offers many templates and plug ins. I used one of the common templates and then customized it with original graphics. I also created custom categories and pages on different topics of interest, and helpful info like how to upload graphics, etc.

Another cool category I added was the birthday category, which lists everyones date of birth. Now no one will have an excuse to forget anyone's birthday. I know it helps me to have them all in a central place. I check the post regularly and change the colors and graphics and add relevant posts, such as Happy Easter, or how much we all love my Mom when we found out she was having surgery. Everyone is checking and posting and commenting on the site. Sometimes we get some pretty hilarious banter going on. I think everyone really likes it.

If your family is not shy, or a little afraid of computers, then you can also have a public site. But the private site really helps getting people who may not normally post, to become active on the site and share their thoughts. In todays busy society a family blog is a good way to keep everyone in touch.

Learn more about this author, Emma Nelson.
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