SmugMug

Today, Heather shares a fabulous family photo system find, SmugMug:

“I’ll admit to my uncontrollable need to document my 4 children's every smile, frown, silly face, and everything in between. With my first child I was vigilant about taking, loading, and emailing loved ones about photos that were ready for viewing. I tried various online album services, but my main complaint was the requirement for viewers to create an account to log in to view. I also needed to send an invitation email in order for friends and family to check out the latest collection.
With the arrival of our triplets, I’m still pretty good about snapping away, slower to load, terrible about organizing and editing, and basically forgetful about notifying friends and family. So I was absolutely thrilled to discover SmugMug. For a nominal annual fee, I was able to create a 'branded' photo website with our own URL (e.g., www.familyname.smugmug.com)! Loading, organizing, and editing pictures is a breeze, I no longer need to send an email inviting friends and family to view pictures, and there’s no requirement to register or log in to view our photos. I typically print our SmugMug URL on our family correspondence (e.g., thank you notes, holiday cards) and friends and family can visit our site whenever they wish.

SmugMug standard accounts include lots of features, such as the ability to personalize your site with themes, send photo emails, view photos at large size, see pictures on your iPhone, and post photos in blogs & forums. They also offer backup services, unlimited storage, no ads or spam, complete privacy, photo traffic and comment tracking, and the ability to create private ShareGroups and create and join communities.”