Digital Scrapbooking

While a family tree scrapbook is a nice heirloom, there is a distinct drawback. Unless you make multiple copies of the book, it can only go to one person. While this may not be a problem now while you have the scrapbook, it can cause problems later when more than one family member wants it. Digital scrapbooking is one way you can get around this genealogy issue.

Digital scrapbooking is similar to traditional scrapbooking, the exception being the scrapbook is in digital form. It can be burned to a disc for distribution to other family members or placed online, enabling any family member with internet access to view it.

Finding Supplies and Displaying Your Work

Free Digital Scrapbooking is a nice site with both freebies and pay items. It's free to join. Members are sent monthly newsletters highlighting new products, some of which are free, and gain access to a member's only page which features a new free scrapbooking kit for free every month. To share your pages, just upload them to the gallery.

Scrapbook Flair offers a free software to help you combine your genealogy and digital scrapbook. The software comes loaded with backgrounds, embellishments and templates, as well as basic photo editing capabilities such as red eye removal. You can upload pages to the gallery for sharing. There are challenges and groups to participate in as well.

Digital Scrapbook Faves is a nice compilation of freebies available on the web. Also included are links to tutorials and tools to help you get the most of the experience. Do note that not everything on the site is free. Some items do have to be purchased. The site does offer coupon and discount codes on some of the pay items though.

Free Web Space for Displaying

If you prefer to display your digital family tree scrapbook on your own site with more control over who views it, there is plenty of free web space available. Check with your ISP. While it isn't widely advertised, most internet access includes at least a small amount of free web space. If your ISP doesn't offer it, there are several free hosts available. The amount of space given can vary widely. There are generally bandwidth limits as well.

Webs, formerly FreeWebs, is one of my favorite free web hosts. Their site builder is user-friendly. Basic accounts are free, but do have some advertising banners. There is an option to upgrade for more features and no advertising if you want. All accounts come with the ability to password-protect the site.

Angelfire and Tripod are both services of Lycos. Both offer free accounts with the option of upgrading if desired. As with most free hosts, it is supported by advertising banners on your site. I haven't worked with these services before, but they appear to be popular.