A family website for news and gatherings, with one honest caveat
A family website gives scattered relatives one place to check: who's had a baby, when the reunion is, what Grandad's war service was. Anticode can build a warm, simple one with news kept in a CMS collection and photos you upload. The caveat comes first, though: published Anticode pages are public. There are no passwords, so anything private belongs in a shared album or group chat, not on the site.
Public by design: what that means for a family
Most family website builders sell themselves on privacy: a password, invited members, private albums. Anticode doesn't offer any of that. Every published page can be read by anyone who has or guesses the address, and search engines may index it. That's not a hidden limitation; it shapes what the site should be.
So treat it like a family noticeboard in a public hall rather than a private diary. It works well for things you'd happily say to a neighbour, and badly for anything else.
| Fine on a public family site | Keep in a private album, chat or email |
|---|---|
| Reunion date, town and how to RSVP | The exact address of the house hosting it |
| Family history, stories, old photographs of people no longer living | Recent photos of children with their full names and school |
| Milestones such as a wedding or a new arrival, with first names | Birth dates, which help identity fraud |
| A family recipe collection | Dates the family home will be empty |
| Links to shared albums that need their own sign-in | Phone numbers and personal email addresses |
What a family site is good for
Gatherings
A reunion, a big birthday or an annual get-together is where a family site earns its keep. One page with the date, the town, travel suggestions, a rough schedule and a form for replies saves a hundred messages. RSVP replies are saved to your project and can be emailed to whoever's organising, or sent to a shared Google Sheet so cousins can see who's coming.
News
Keep news as a CMS collection: each entry with a title, a date, a short text and a photo, edited in the dashboard. Anticode serves the collection as a listing (such as /news/) and a page for each entry, so you can send a link to one item in the family chat. Whoever writes up news needs access to the account; a Team workspace lets several relatives do it.
Family history
Stories of older generations, scanned photographs and a simple timeline suit a public site well, and other researchers sometimes find and add to them. For a full family tree with records and sources, a family tree website or a genealogy service is a better fit.
Photos
Built as an app, the site uses photos you upload, and the model sees them when it places them, so a picture of the 1978 reunion can sit beside that story; files are checked by their first bytes and stored under your account. A designed page shows curated library photos instead, with your own only in a CMS collection (stories or an album) whose image field holds hosted addresses. Add captions with first names and years. For large collections, link out to a shared album on a photo service that has its own privacy controls, and keep only a few chosen pictures on the site.
Building it
Describe the family and what the site is for: "a website for the Hargreaves family, with news, the summer reunion in Whitby and a page of family stories". The Architect asks a few questions where the answer changes the build, such as whether you want a reply form for the reunion. Organic or Editorial designs suit a family site; Playful is fun if the main audience is grandchildren. The visual editor lets anyone with access fix a name or a date by clicking it.
If you really need privacy
- A shared photo album on the service your family already uses, with invite-only access.
- A group chat or email list for day-to-day news.
- A dedicated private family site service, which offers passwords and member invitations.
- The Next.js export, if someone in the family is a developer: it includes email sign-in and roles, and they would host and maintain it.
Limits
- No passwords, private pages or member logins.
- No comments. Relatives can send messages through a form, but can't post on the site.
- No photo albums with uploads from relatives. Only people with access to the account add photos.
- English pages. Relatives abroad will see the site in English unless you write some text in another language yourself.
Questions people ask
Can I put a password on my family website?
Not on Anticode. Published pages are public. Use a shared album or a private family service for anything that needs a password.
Will the site show up on Google?
It can. Each published site serves a sitemap and robots.txt, and anyone can find a public page. Write it assuming strangers might read it.
Can several relatives update it?
Yes, if they share access. A Team workspace gives several people access; members can edit but can't delete projects or take the site down.