About a year ago I started with the idea of building a family website. The thing was that my family was scattered all around the globe. Some in europe, others in the USA, most of us in Mexico, but we all wanted to be comunicated. We wanted to share pictures in a easy way a have place of our own to have some fun online. So I came up with the idea of using iWeb to do this. It is great software indeed but only available for me since I was the only person in the family with a mac. I tried at first, my family sent me their pictures and I uploaded them but after a while it started becoming too big to manage myself. We had soo much pictures and videos, it grew too quickly and I had to upload it all every time I update the website. And uploading half a gigabyte daily is no fun after a while. Besides I was the only one able to do it.
I started looking for alternatives. And I found wordpress. I inmediately fell in love with the system. It was all simplicity, had a big community and tons of themes and plugins. So I decide to give it a try. I first installed wordpress, configure it the way I wanted.
- Activate nice permalinks. Having understandable links is always good. I always do this in all my blogs but it is not necesary.
- Stop search engines from getting into your content. Since this is a family website you dont want google nosing in your personal affairs. So just go to in the wordpress admin panel to options > privacy > I would like to block search engines.
- Allow all comments. Your blog will be private, so you will not have to worry about spam or stupid comments, so go to options > discussion > Before a comment appears: deactivate all options down there. You will not need people to put their name and email since they will all have to be registered in order to comment.
- Install Members-Only plugin. This plugin does what its title says. Only allow members. In order to enter the website you have to be registered, here is the link. After you install it activate it. And then go to Options > Members Only > Activate Members Only checkmark and below select login page. This will force everyone to register before entering.
Now we have finish the configuration stuff. Lets get the family involved. We have to make them register or you can add them manually through the users admin page. That is up to you. I prefer that each family member join by themselves beacuse in this way they can choose their own username and password and you don’t know it so they feel more privacy. If you want them to register you have to activate this feature in your blog. For that go to options >General > Activate: anyone can register. Make sure all your family members register through the login page and then close it so that no one else can register.
Now we have finished seting up the basics. It should be fully functional for you and your family but I have found this plugins make their experience in the blog more satisfying. And also can be quit useful.
- WP-Grins. This plugin ads clickable smilies to he post editor and to the comments.
- Members only. As I said before. It protects your website from outside nosy visitors.
- WP- Polls. This plugin is great for simple family questions like “How to do you want to celebrate Tommy’s birthday?” It adds to the discussion and people love them.
- WP Stats. I think this one of the plugins I have found to generate traffic in my family blog. It comes with a sidebar widget that can be configured to put the posts with most comments so that people keep adding comments. In my family worked marvelously. Also you can put how much comments per author. It generates competition between members and produce more traffic.
- WP-Simple Viewer. This is great for pictures. It generates a flash gallery of all the pictures in a folder you select. The only drawback is that you can only upload the pictures through FTP. It works very well and looks good too. And of course people like them a lot.
- Wordpress.com Stats. This plugin is not essential but a good feature to add. It gives stats of the use of your blog. In order to use it you have to get a wordpress.com account.
There are several other plugins that can help your website look more atractive but this list would have no end. And besides maybe not all plugins are for you. Also another recomendation I make is to periodically back up your wordpress installation. There are several ways to do this but the easier one is to go to in your admin panel Manage > Export > Download Export file. If you have any questions regarding how to install or configure there are tons of documents here.
I will leave you here all the links to the docs you may need regarding your installation and configuration. If you have any question don’t hesitate to ask. Google may also help.
- Installing Wordpress
- I installed wordpress - Now what?
- Tons of plugins
- Was not enough? Here, have more plugins
- Themes
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