of a bit of description of family outings and events, plus photos and short videos. Alli posted about a St. Patrick’s Day ritual, for example, with a short video showing how she created a “rainbow” using streamers, which she stretched and taped all through the house and down the stairs: They ended by dangling over the dining room table, and underneath she left a “pot of gold” (a gold-painted pot with candy inside). Visitors to the blog can type in a comment after a posting, and there is one from the boys’ grandmother saying she hasn’t been feeling too well lately and is happy the family had a fun holiday.
Spring Break Blog
You may be thinking a blog is a huge commitment that needs to spotlight every meal and moment in your family life. But some blogs are created to mark a single event or experience, like the Miller Keithley family’s blog from 2009, which mostly covers the adventures of the family of five on a vacation to the Grand Canyon. The kids got to post their own comments on the trip, saying what they liked most, and there are inserted short videos. You’ll find it at MillerKeithley . blogspot.com .
Living Abroad Blog
Wags Party of 6: Trying to Get Beyond Status Updates is the name of the ongoing blog kept by Susan Wagoner about her husband, who serves in the military, and their four daughters and their daily life in Japan. Living so far away from extended family, she uses the blog to share holiday celebrations, the first day of school, or her daughter Claire’s first ballet lesson. It certainly comforted everyone to see postings right after the earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
As a working (telecommuting) mom, Susan Wagoner is way too busy to keep up her scrapbooking, but she finds it much easier to maintain the blog. “It’s great to be able to share our life with family back home, but I confess my primary motivation is to get these cute stories and pictures down on ‘paper,’” she explains. “I’m planning on exporting the blog into a book each year or so.” Also, the blog exists as a reminder of different major happenings. Although Susan posts only a few of the photos from each day, she carefully saves all her digital photos on her computer, organizing them into monthly folders, so they can be appreciated and shared later when her daughters grow up.
One of the features included in the Wags Party of 6 blog, which is common to blog services, is that when you go to the Wagoners’ blog, not only does it display the most recent post first, but it also displays a list of other blogs they like. In this case, the list shows blogs kept by other members of the extended family. These are automatically updated whenever a new post is added, so that Susan can go to her own blog and get an instant update on what else is going on within her tribe: After the name of each blog, there is the title of the latest post and the time it was posted.
Family Blogging 101
The most popular free blogging platforms include Blogger, TypePad, and WordPress. All three of them have fans, though many say Blogger is the easiest to use for the technophobe, whereas WordPress and TypePad have more flexibility.
Go to Blogger.com (a Google product), TypePad.com , and WordPress.com to get specifics on how their formats work, and tour some existing blogs. Resources like these will also keep you updated about all legal requirements. For one thing, the Federal Trade Commission requires that bloggers declare any free products or paid advertising they receive on the blog or face heavy fines.
For a good step-by-step tutorial on what is involved in starting a blog for WordPress, try HowToStartABlog.org . There is a good explanation of how the various blog services differ at the website DigitalFamily.com , though Janine Warner’s website is mostly for professionals.
Memory Makers: Photos and Videos
There has been an explosion of services online that allow families to save, organize, and share their digital photographs and videos.
Spring Break Blog
You may be thinking a blog is a huge commitment that needs to spotlight every meal and moment in your family life. But some blogs are created to mark a single event or experience, like the Miller Keithley family’s blog from 2009, which mostly covers the adventures of the family of five on a vacation to the Grand Canyon. The kids got to post their own comments on the trip, saying what they liked most, and there are inserted short videos. You’ll find it at MillerKeithley . blogspot.com .
Living Abroad Blog
Wags Party of 6: Trying to Get Beyond Status Updates is the name of the ongoing blog kept by Susan Wagoner about her husband, who serves in the military, and their four daughters and their daily life in Japan. Living so far away from extended family, she uses the blog to share holiday celebrations, the first day of school, or her daughter Claire’s first ballet lesson. It certainly comforted everyone to see postings right after the earthquake and tsunami in 2011.
As a working (telecommuting) mom, Susan Wagoner is way too busy to keep up her scrapbooking, but she finds it much easier to maintain the blog. “It’s great to be able to share our life with family back home, but I confess my primary motivation is to get these cute stories and pictures down on ‘paper,’” she explains. “I’m planning on exporting the blog into a book each year or so.” Also, the blog exists as a reminder of different major happenings. Although Susan posts only a few of the photos from each day, she carefully saves all her digital photos on her computer, organizing them into monthly folders, so they can be appreciated and shared later when her daughters grow up.
One of the features included in the Wags Party of 6 blog, which is common to blog services, is that when you go to the Wagoners’ blog, not only does it display the most recent post first, but it also displays a list of other blogs they like. In this case, the list shows blogs kept by other members of the extended family. These are automatically updated whenever a new post is added, so that Susan can go to her own blog and get an instant update on what else is going on within her tribe: After the name of each blog, there is the title of the latest post and the time it was posted.
Family Blogging 101
The most popular free blogging platforms include Blogger, TypePad, and WordPress. All three of them have fans, though many say Blogger is the easiest to use for the technophobe, whereas WordPress and TypePad have more flexibility.
Go to Blogger.com (a Google product), TypePad.com , and WordPress.com to get specifics on how their formats work, and tour some existing blogs. Resources like these will also keep you updated about all legal requirements. For one thing, the Federal Trade Commission requires that bloggers declare any free products or paid advertising they receive on the blog or face heavy fines.
For a good step-by-step tutorial on what is involved in starting a blog for WordPress, try HowToStartABlog.org . There is a good explanation of how the various blog services differ at the website DigitalFamily.com , though Janine Warner’s website is mostly for professionals.
Memory Makers: Photos and Videos
There has been an explosion of services online that allow families to save, organize, and share their digital photographs and videos.
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