Do you have a large family or one that is spread all over the world? With the Internet, it has never been easier to stay in touch with each other. However it still takes some effort to compose e-mails, attach photos and send them out to all your friends and family. And as I mentioned in a previous article, e-mail systems are not made to handle many large photo files: article. So what can you do? Here is a website application to the rescue!
The website is called http://www.sampa.com/. Sampa allows you create your own family website where you can create articles (more commonly called a blog) on a family event (e.g. births, birthdays, parties). There are many premade design templates to choose from and this gets you off to a fast start.
However, what sets Sampa apart from other blog sites is that it has a built in family tree application that makes it much easier to show all your family relationships with important dates and contact information.
It has a photo album where you can upload your family photos or create new photo albums. The site also allow you to insert photos in your stories.
Now, with all this information about your family on-line, you don’t want just anyone able to view and collect the info for an identify thief crime. So Sampa has security built in to the system. The site can be set to only allow users to view and add items to the site. Users must be invited to join the site by the site administrator. With an invitation, the user will be able to view the site and add in stories. They also can comment on anyone else’s story and photos.
Users can change their personal information. No more sending out e-mails notifying every one of phone number changes, e-mail changes, etc. There is also an editor and administrator levels which allow you do more things than a regular user and approve changes to the website before they are displayed.
Another nice feature is the ability to receive daily or weekly update e-mails automatically from the website on things that have been changed.
Groups can be created (e.g. family, friends) so that e-mails can be sent to a group of people. This is useful when announcing an upcoming event.
The basic site is free but you are limited to how many users you can invite per week and how many photos you can add to your site per week. You can upgrade to two higher levels which allow you unlimited invites and photo uploads and the top level giving you a custom URL and a site free of ad banners.
Sampa has made it easier than ever to keep your family and friends up to date with everyone else. It’s cheap (or free) and secure. So try it out for free and if you like, upgrade to get additional features and capabilities.
Happy Family Blogging
