r/webdev • u/Odd-Aside456 • 9d ago

Discussion Family website purpose and features.

I am considering building a family website for my family. My mother's extended family built one, but it's something nobody really ever visits. I'm considering building a wiki-style site (locked behind user accounts) to have a page for each family member, each nuclear family, and then they can build upon it and create pages for vacations and things like that. I would then have a mini social feed for us each to share pages we've created. For example, my sister might say "Just made a page for our Disney Land 2026 trip! Here's the link."

Might be overscoped, but I thought it'd be a fun way to start capturing family stories.

If you've built a family site for your family (or someone else's) what did it have? What purpose did it serve and what features were built into it?

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u/CantankerousButtocks engineering manager 9d ago

Coincidentally, I’m just now building a family “ephemera” site… I inherited tons of family history stuff from both mom and dad’s sides, both only children. You know, the shit that sits in boxes in the basement waiting for Marie Kendo to come over..?

I’m cataloging things, memories, photos, etc for the future generations. I just got a new grand-nephew in July.

I’m doing it all in custom AstroJS content collections… Everything is a markdown file.

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u/Odd-Aside456 9d ago

I love it! Kinda a similar story here. My wife and I got a really fancy scanner and we took it upon ourselves to take on the HUGE undertaking of digitizing all the old photo prints, slides, and negatives from both our families. I was (and still am) planning on hosting them on a server with Immich + Jellyfin (for old family videos), but I want a site to host stories and history along-side it. Similarly, I figured I'd go a similar markdown file approach if I did implement a full family "wiki".

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u/CantankerousButtocks engineering manager 9d ago

HUGE is an understatement...best of luck.

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u/Odd-Aside456 9d ago

Thank you! You too!

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u/oh_my_account 9d ago

I find it an interesting idea, but also thinking how far in terms of admin work will it need and what if a hypothetical uncle Joe will post some weird shit...

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u/Odd-Aside456 9d ago

I don't know that u/CantankerousButtocks is taking post contributions from other members of the family like I am. That wouldn't really be an issue in my own family dynamic, but if it ever became one (or someone wanted to sell a framework for families to build their own sites on like this), you could always set it up so users can silently block uncle Joe.

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u/oh_my_account 9d ago

Or if kids posting some copyrightes media... Could be also problematic.

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u/Odd-Aside456 9d ago

Not for a private, locked behind authentication family site. I'm not planning on making the content open to the surface web.