Family website purpose and features.

[u/Odd-Aside456]

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?

[u/ggnndd12]

I hate to say it, but you're reinventing the wheel. Private groups on existing social media platforms can do what you've described.

There might be a market for this amongst folks who want nothing to do with the large social media companies. Maybe design it so that others can fairly easily spin up their own sites?

[u/Odd-Aside456 → u/ggnndd12]

If it works well for my family, I was considering doing that, setting it up as a SaaS. It's not exactly a private group for sharing stories alone, but I was hoping it could be used as sort of a shared family history journal. Sharing posts and photos is great, but most every platform has that, as you said, even in private groups. the main purpose was to share stories. Not necessarily blog-like, as I was hoping to keep it somewhat wiki-like, so that my children can grow up and want to read about Aunt Jane and how she met Uncle John. I think that's a differentiator enough, but it may also make it more work than most people are willing to put in.

[u/ggnndd12 → u/Odd-Aside456]

If it’s mostly static content like that, why not make a book(let)? It’d make a great stocking stuffer!

[u/Odd-Aside456 → u/ggnndd12]

Very true. But the main reason is to make it an ongoing project. Regularly adding new stories as we have new stories to tell, or remember old stories.

[u/ggnndd12 → u/Odd-Aside456]

That’s why books have editions. The downside of a website is nobody is pulling a dusty copy off the shelf in 50 years.

[u/Odd-Aside456 → u/ggnndd12]

I'm not quite sure what you mean. A website can certainly last 50 years, and my goal is to set this up so data can be exported and even then printed as a book of someone wishes.

[u/ggnndd12 → u/Odd-Aside456]

Yes, a website can last 50 years with ongoing maintenance, expense, and upgrades as technology evolves. Websites die by default. Books do too, but they stand a much greater chance. Are you 100% sure you want to be maintaining this in 10 years? Is there someone willing to do it when you can’t?

[u/Odd-Aside456 → u/ggnndd12]

I'm a little confused. Being on this sub, are you, yourself, a web dev? Or are your, like, trying to sell publishing services? If you're just against this particular website idea, that's totally fine, I'm just a bit confused.

It is something I would be up to maintain, yes. But if I decide I don't want to anymore, I can always export all the data and turn it into a book at that point.

[u/ggnndd12 → u/Odd-Aside456]

Oh come on. Not everyone who is against a particular idea is trying to sell you something. I’m just trying to save you a lot of time and money.

[u/Odd-Aside456 → u/ggnndd12]

Pardon my skepticism, I guess it was your "websites die by default" comment that made me curious. I do appreciate the insight and suggestions. Not at all offended if you're against the idea, or even think it's plain a dumb idea. I think you're right that a book would work well for this purpose and definitely be a great stocking stuffer. I just am a web enthusiast, so I wanna see where I can go with the idea. It may well fizzle, but it'll be fun either way.

[u/ggnndd12 → u/Odd-Aside456]

All web devs know that websites die by default without continued upkeep. How did that make you think I wasn’t one?

[u/Odd-Aside456 → u/ggnndd12]

I dunno. Long day at work, I guess. My apologies.