Advice/opinion On A Family Website

i have alot of family members (extended) and we are scatered allover the place, some living in australia, some in the us and alot in new zealand. now i want to create a simple and easy to use website so that family members can register and post news updates (inluding photos and videos) so that other relatives can read through... i was thinking about wordpress since it's probably the simplest for me, and hopefully some suggestions from you guys about some suitable plugins to meet what i am aiming for.cheers in advance

I think you can as you say use Wordpress and find some suitable plugins to use it, or you might use Facebook, create a group or a page and you can always connect there with your family and post news, photos and etc. It all depends on the privacy, if you want to share it with the world or you want to make it only for your family, secured with a password?It's much easier to use some kind of a service online, rather than installing and maintaining Wordpress yourself, you need hosting and etc. But it depends what you want, you have full access if you do it by yourself on your own hosting.

I think you can as you say use Wordpress and find some suitable plugins to use it, or you might use Facebook, create a group or a page and you can always connect there with your family and post news, photos and etc. It all depends on the privacy, if you want to share it with the world or you want to make it only for your family, secured with a password?
It's much easier to use some kind of a service online, rather than installing and maintaining Wordpress yourself, you need hosting and etc. But it depends what you want, you have full access if you do it by yourself on your own hosting.

yea we do make contacts on Facebook and stuff... but as you mentioned, it's just in the public domain... i'd rather have a specific site for the family alone... in that way more private and important family information goes on it...

i do have a hosting account with Xisto now so it's a matter of time and hopefully picking the correct plugins

If you're comfortable with wordpress, then use it, and get a forum board to go along with it. Phpbb, or any of the others out there. If you want more functionality, Then go for Joomla, as it is strong, stable, and easier to use than Drupal, and free. With Joomla, you could get an extension called "jomsocial" which costs, or "community builder" which is free, and both serve a "facebook" like function. Only along with that, you can integrate forums directly into Joomla, easily, add chat, and do - pretty much anything! The downside? It has more buttons and levers than wordpress to operate. But, if you're not looking for all that, then by all means, stick with wordpress, get more comfortable with the controls, check through their plugin database and just play around with it. Use the forums (and the forum search tool) on the websites.As far as plugins go for wordpress, I really couldn't tell you. I haven't really messed with itsince picking up Joomla, and teaching myself everything about that system. I know that, like mostopen source blogging, or cms software, the plugins that work well change from month to month (give or take). Just go look around, and read the reviews on them, forum search, google search. And have fun.

Edited May 29, 2011 by xamire (see edit history)