I have a pretty large and extended family. Half of us live on the East Coast and the other half lives on the West Coast. To make matters worse, my nephew was teaching ESL overseas in Japan for a year. I found that one of the easiest ways to keep track of my family was by setting up a group on Yahoo. It is something that I happened to stumble upon a few years ago and it really changed they way that we keep in touch.

Yahoo groups allow you to develop an online community that can be like to other sites, made public or kept private and much more. There are areas for pictures, files, databases, even polls. There is a calendar where we add all of our birthdays, recitals and events as well. 

Setting up a group on Yahoo is easy and even better than that, it is free. You set one person up as the administrator and that is it. People can update what they want and you can publish anything that you like. If you don't have any web skills, this is the best route possible. 

If you are at all interested, this is how you start: http://groups.yahoo.com/start

This is obviously a very simplified way to keep in touch and have a good time keeping up a site without knowing code, learning HTML or paying someone to do it for you. For those who are a little more technologically sound than me, this would not be the best route as it is not fully customizable and you need access to yahoo to go to your site. It is, however, very easy for me and my loved ones!  We are able to keep in touch with group messages and updates, and upload vacation pictures and videos.  It has turned into a mini facebook for just our family members. 

If you are interested in other free web site set ups, you can go to MSN, or synthasite.  They have very easy tools to use.  If you have more experience building a site and are just looking for someone to host it, GoDaddy is very good and happens to be inexpensive as well.