Private Blog?

[Lily House]

Is there such a thing as a private blog?

I'm one week away from heading off, with my family, for 4 month road trip around Australia.

Rather than send regular emails to family and close friends, I thought it might be more time-efficient to set up a blog.

What I basically want to do is provide a brief description of where we are, what we are doing, plus add a couple of photos, every week or so.

I don't want to have photos of my children on the internet. So I'd like a blog site that the general public cannot access - only those people I give the 'address' to (if that is the correct word?), and password protected.

Also, it needs to be extremely user friendly - something that would be quick and easy for me to set up (i'm not computer literate, other than basic user stuff).

And if possible, it would be great to have a feature where family/friends can leave a message, in return, for me.

Does such a thing exist - a private blog site, easy to use, and safe from public eyes??

Thanks for any assistance you can provide me.


Lily

 

[Jaffasoft]

I know just the thing that will be right for you.

Try this and sign up there is settings in there that you can set all it to private or public!
http://360.yahoo.com

This is what it says in the 'Blog settings':Who can see your blog

You decide who has permission to view your blog. You can post for close friends and family only or make your blog available to the public. If your blog has a public setting, anyone on the Internet can view it, and links to your Yahoo! 360° blog may appear in search results on Yahoo! Search or other search engines.

 

[Lily House]

That's it!

Many thanks Jaffasoft.
That is exactly the kind of thing I was after.

Lily

 

[GoldCoastGirl]

www.myspace.com

MySpace is really easy to make your profile private plus everything else in it. Then your family and friends only have to send you friend requests to be added to that profile (but they must know your email address or last name before they can request for you to add them as a friend).

You can opt for your blogs to be "public", "friends only" or "preferred list". If your profile is already set to private (you have to be a friend in order to view it) then any public blogs will only be able to be viewed by those that are your friends same with "friends only".

The same with photos.

It's more user-friendly than you think! ;D


Or else there is www.blognow.com.au

 

[kaf]

Thanks for asking the question Lily house - excellent, just what I was after too! Will have a go with the websites tonight - thanks for the links guys!

Cheers

kaf

 

[Jaffasoft]

My space seems to be the trendiest at the moment and since it is tailored for Australia I would probably suggest that one too! There are a few around that are pretty straight forward and easy to use just go into the areas that say 'blog settings' to set it to privacy and read the help pages.

 

[Lily House]

Thanks GoldCoastGirl,


I set up my first blog last night on yahoo360, and sent invitations to view, to a couple of family members. Over 14 hours later, and they are yet to receive their invitation emails.
Not sure whether it's me or yahoo?? Pity, cause it was easy to set up (or so it seemed) and had all the features I wanted.

Think I'll give one of these other sites a go.

Thanks for your replies, and I'm glad, Kaf, that someone else has found this info useful too.

Lily

 

[JamesGG]

Hiya,

I've just come back from my Excellent Adventure and set up a myspace account just before I left to keep in touch with everyone.

Only issue that I found was that your pictures have to be public, or private to selected myspace users. Which means your family / friends will also need myspace accounts in order to set it up the way you want it.

Since most people I know aren't on myspace, I just put my photos up as public to make life easier for everyone. No small children for me to worry about protecting, though.

You can see what I did here.

Cheers

James.

 

[Lily House]

Hiya James,
Thanks for your contribution, and glad to know you have had such an excellent adventure.


My Yahoo invitations did get through - they just took 3 days.
And same as Myspace - people have to join yahoo to see my blog. It doesn't take long though - so I'll leave it to my friends/family to decide if my blog is worth the effort of joining.

Speaking of myspace - I checked it out after Goldcoastgirl's post. As a mother of two young daughers, I found it quite disturbing. Raunch culture is alive and thriving!!! - seems many young women (I'm talking teenagers) feel the need to display photos of themselves semi-naked. I'm no prude, but I hope when my girls are teenagers, they avoid putting any photos of themselves on the net, let alone ones of themselves without clothes. I hope they can value themselves for more than how much skin they can expose!

Lily

 

[geoffw]

Also be careful about what you say- comments may not be as private as you think.

I once accidentally came across a trusted employee's Myspace- the comment was there "I hate my job and I hate my boss".

And an ex employee posted there "I liked Subway. Nobody worried that I did a c**p job until I got fired".

And I guess the same comment applies to comments in this forum as well. I don't know of any employees who post here, but any of them could come across any of my comments. (Including this one- I'd better delete it ASAP )