Starting blog/baby webpage - any downside?

[Anonymous]

With our families scattered across the U.S., I have been thinking about starting a private blog or baby webpage to post baby pics and anecodates. Nothing fancy. Any downside or reasons not to do it? I know you're not supposed to post your full name or address anywhere, but are there any other privacy concerns or reasons to pick one hosting site vs. another? A lot of friends use blogspot.com, but even if you make that "private," your site can still be linked through Google images, which is the only reason I'm wary. Thanks.

[Anonymous]

I am not a fan of making my children public. I've known people who have had their images stolen. This blog post summarizes it pretty well:

http://www.wifeandmommy.com/2008/05/on-posting-photos.html

I either email photos to friends/family...ask in advance if they want to be on an email list.

Good luck.

[Anonymous]

I started a blog about the same time as DC arrived. I posted about 2 entries before life got in the way.

I use Google's Picasa photo sharing site. I'm not the best about keeping it up-to-date but its an easier way of sharing our lives with the far-flung family members. I've changed the settings so the photos are not searchable. You can also choose to make albums public or private.

[Anonymous]

My sister has a blog...and she doesn't realize it but all of the other family members make fun of her blog because of the way she writes it....

[Anonymous]

I've been blogging for our family and friends about a year now on blogger.com and it's been great. Not only do friends and family far away get to see what's happening in our lives, we've got a great memoir of our family. There are websites now that can eventually turn a blog into a book as well for you. Just make sure you take all of the security precautions you can. We have limited our site to invited guests only, and then have a monitoring company that tracks who visits the site.

I've enjoyed it. And unlike the previous poster, my friends and family laugh with us on the site (not behind our backs!). I don't profess to be a great writer-- but it's fun.

I say go for it!

[Anonymous]

We have a blog for DD, but only post pictures and video, no writing. We set all the settings to private, the blog isn't listed, and supposedly is not available to search engines (although I have doubts about that). There is very little to search because there is literally no writing other than the titles of the posts (and those are usually pretty generic - eg "Our recent trip to the beach"), there is no personal info of any kind on there at all. We used to email pictures, but got several complaints from people that our emails would clog up their inboxes, and we just find that the blog is much easier on everyone. One downside that I can think of is that once you provide the link to someone, they can then forward it to anyone else. Also, I haven't figured out a way to make the pictures/video un-downloadable (is that a word?), so once someone has access to the blog they get the pictures/video.

[Anonymous]

I put pics up on facebook and put pretty high security restrictions on it. Works pretty well for us but you don't have the blog capabilities.

[Anonymous]

I second facebook, I was going to start a blog on blogspot.com or something similar but then got freaked out at the last minute because people could search for it and see it. You can restrict who sees your pictures easier on facebook.

[Anonymous]

You can actually make your blogger/blogspot page private just like you can at Facebook. Users need a password to view your page. I think the same is true with Wordpress. Everything an be password protected so people viewing have to have a password to access.

[Anonymous]

You might want to try smugmug.com. Great way to share photos and short video clips, and you can adjust the security to be sure it doesn't come up in smugmug or Google searches. It's an annual fee for you ($39?) but free for others to view.