In this post I'd like to share some ideas about why a family blog should be on your top 10 list, how to easily set up a free blog and how to post to it daily from the comfort of your smart phone in just a few minutes a day.
A few years ago my wife had the vision of creating a family blog that would serve primarily as our family journal where we would post stories, achievements, pictures and videos that we wanted to archive and remember. It seemed like a big project but with the help of my sister-in-law, Emily, we were up and running with our very own family blog. After getting it set up I soon realized how simple it was and have been posting almost daily ever since.
Using a service called "blog-to-print," at the end of each year we convert our blog into a hard-cover book which sits on a table in our living room. By keeping a family blog we have been able to capture so many special and fun memories that might have easily been forgotten. Here is my overarching reason why I do it:
I love bring a dad and they grow up so fast that I don't want to forget a single day!
Creating a blog is actually really easy and anyone can do it. I recommend using "Blogger." which is a free blog-publishing service (owned by google) that allows multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. The blogs are hosted by Google at a subdomain of "blogspot.com." Did I mention it's free? What I love is it's very intuitive. Once you set up an account you can quickly create the blog name, layout, pages, etc.
First, think of the name you want for your blog. The URL will end up being "name.blogspot.com." For example my wife's favorite word is "inspire" so our blog name is "inspiration station" and our blog URL is...
http://inspirationstationfam.blogspot.com/
It's a little long so keep that in mind when you're choosing your name. You can use a generic header or if you want something nicer, you can have a custom header created on fiverr.com for $5.00 and simply upload it to your blog header in the settings.
Next is your layout. Decide what page tabs you want and where. On our blog we currently have 5 pages and the tabs are at the top just under the header and they are...
- Home
- About the Norton's
- Big RV Trip
- Jerry's Take
- Homeschooling
"Home" is where each post resides with the newest post at the top. The other pages are specific things of relevance for our family. For example, "big RV trip" is all about our 9 month full time RV adventure. The "homeschooling" page has videos from classes my wife has given at home school conferences.
Once you set up your pages, it's easy to write content and upload pictures and videos. We do a lot of pictures and video. Videos can be uploaded from your computer and embed right on the page or you can get the embed code from YouTube.com and embed your YouTube videos.
Blogger offers dozens of free "widgets" that you can put on your website, like calendars, weather, etc. One widget I installed was a "Norton family picture gallery" that rotates through several different pictures.
Once your blog is set up, you're ready to start posting! From your computer once logged in to blogger, you can create a post but here's the coolest way ever to post to your blog. Blogger will create a custom email that will send right to your blog as a post.
The subject of the email is the blog post title and the body of the email is the actual post. For example, you walk into the kitchen and your 2-year old moved the stool and he's inside the fridge trying to get the whipped cream (just happened to me). You snap a pic with your smart phone and send an email to the blog with the picture. The subject of the email (post title) is "Busted" and the body of the email says, "look who I just caught sneaking sneaking whipped cream" (along with the picture). Done. Memory captured. Took 20 seconds! This is how we have thousands (not hundreds) of posts on our blog. As a matter of fact, I'm typing this post right now as an email on my iPhone at 3:00 am (can't sleep).
Another cool feature of blogger is "labels," which allows you to tag each post to specific topics of your choice. I created a label for each of my kids as well as other things such as "Disney" (yea we go a lot). My list is at the bottom right side under "topics." About once a month or so on my laptop (not currently available in mobile version), I'll go back through my posts and label each one. For example, as of this writing my daughter Gracie has 228 under her label (what can I say, she's my only girl). These are all posts about her. Labeling allows you to classify and sort your posts.
I have gotten into a habit of taking pics of everything that happens every day and posting those memories to our blog. I even cc friends and relatives at the same time I'm emailing it to the blog. In fact if I miss a day and don't send an email (blog post) my grandma will email me asking if everything is alright. Quick tip, when emailing videos from your smart phone, keep the video to about 30 seconds otherwise the file is too large to email.
So if you want to make sure your kids don't look back someday and tell you they had an unhappy childhood, make sure you have lots of proof (blog posts of them smiling) that you can show them how awesome their childhood really was.
Keep it simple, have an awesome family, take lots of pics and videos and start posting!
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