Many parents wonder whether it is safe to put their children’s photos on the Web; others simply don’t want to share their stories with the world for fear that they may attract unwanted attention. Although there have been some highly publicized cases of children running into trouble because of someone they met online, such incidents are rare. I consider a child’s photo appearing on a Web page to be roughly equivalent to his or her image appearing in a school yearbook or in a sports team photo in a local newspaper.

Millions of families have created Web sites and enjoy sharing their photos and stories. Rather than expressing concern about making their stories and photos public on the Web, many families report that they have made new friends and reconnected with old ones thanks to their Web sites. Here are some other things you can do to protect your personal information:

• Don’t include your home address or phone number on your Web site.
• Don’t include your work address or phone number.
• Be careful when writing about the times when you won’t be at home, such as the dates you’ll be on vacation.

If you want more control over your site and no ads, a Web site built with the templates included in this blog and hosted on a commercial service provider is a great option. With just a little knowledge of a program such as Adobe Dreamweaver, you can customize predesigned Web page templates. The beauty of creating your own site design with a program like Dreamweaver is that you can add as much text and as many images as you want, and you can change the design as much or as little as your talent and time allow.

When you use a program such as Dreamweaver (whether you use templates or not), you create and edit your Web pages on your own computer and then transfer them to the server when you’re ready to publish your site to the Web. The transfer process is easy and the benefit of building the site on your computer first is that you can test your work and experiment with different options before you publish your site on the server and make it available on the Internet.

No matter what option you choose, you can register your own domain name and point it to your Web site. This means you can direct people to your own special Web address, such as www.topweddingsites.com, whether you host your site at AngelFire.com, at www.myevent.com, or on your own server.

Best Practices and Models

A great Web site combines beautiful images and well-written text in a design that makes it easy to find your way to the most important information. But if you’re staring at a blank computer screen, creating a Web site can seem daunting. To help inspire you, this section presents a few well-designed or innovative Web sites. So sit back, relax, and get your browser ready to go for a ride — after reading the descriptions of these sites, you may want to see them for yourself.

Wedding sites that inspire

When Jonathon and Joanne decided to get married on a Caribbean island, they knew that creating a Web site would make it easier to coordinate the travel arrangements and accommodations for their guests. On the site, shown in Figure, they posted helpful information, such as the “Things to Bring” section, which includes passports, suntan lotion, and snorkel gear.

Jonathon and Joanne’s Web site was created using blogging software, which makes it easy to add updates (even from a tropical island). Studying other people’s wedding sites is a great way to see what you can do with your own site. You’ll find many more wedding sites online at www.topweddingsites.com.