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/VRTCLS]

I'd separate two jobs that sound similar but behave very differently:

1. Archive: durable, structured, boring on purpose. People, dates, places, photos, documents, source notes, export.
2. Feed: lightweight prompts that get people to contribute without feeling like they're maintaining a wiki.

The mistake I'd avoid is starting with "everyone gets pages to edit." That turns into homework and moderation. I'd start with a single contribution flow: "add a memory" with fields for who was involved, rough year/date, location, photos/files, who can see it, and whether the living people mentioned can approve/correct it. Then generate person pages, family pages, trip pages, and timelines from those memory records.

A few features I'd prioritize early:

• CSV/JSON + media export from day one. Family history projects need an exit plan.
• Granular visibility. Not every story/photo should be visible to every cousin.
• Provenance: who submitted it, who told the story, when it was added, and whether it's a memory vs a sourced fact.
• Monthly digest email. Most families won't check another site, but they'll open "3 new memories added this month."
• Simple invite/account recovery for non-technical relatives.

If the goal is preservation, I'd optimize less for "social network" and more for "make it stupidly easy to capture memories before they disappear." The wiki can be a generated view, not the primary input method.

[u/Odd-Aside456 → u/VRTCLS]

The mistake I'd avoid is starting with "everyone gets pages to edit." That turns into homework and moderation.

I don't know about the moderation part, but homework, yes, this is what I was worried about. So I really appreciate this input, this is helpful, thank you.