DIY: Holiday Web Gift
Posted December 18, 2005 — 28 Comments
It’s been a really crazy holiday season for me and despite lots of advance planning I’m still finding myself behind the ball when it comes to gifts and such. One of the things I wanted to have done by now was having sent out a holiday card. No such luck.
I thought that maybe a few of you might be in the same boat, so I wanted to share an idea with you. In years past I’d always take some time and create an online “gift” of some kind. It was always well received and was something that I could take my time with because delivery was almost instantaneous. This year, while I don’t have the time I used to, I can use this idea to make sure I’ve got something going out to friends in family that’ll get there before the season is too far gone.
Creating a holiday Web “gift” is easier than ever and I’ve got a few ideas for you:
- Create a special holiday Flickr photostream. This is something you can make private if you wish. You can include messages and captions with your photos and allow people to reply with holiday greetings of their own.
- Do a holiday blog post (or two, or three). Getting a blog is a piece of cake. You can use a hosted service like Blogger or Wordpress.com or you can get your own domain and host it yourself. Dreamhost has good, cheap domain and hosting services with one-click installs of Wordpress.
- Create a slideshow. I did this a few years ago and it was a big hit. It was a lot of work, but now with products like Slideshow Pro this kind of thing is pretty easy.
I’m still not 100% sure what I’ll do this year for friends and family, but I’m really glad I’ve got the WWW to help me out of a time crunch. Nothing like next-to-instant communication. Speaking of which – HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!
Feel free to share your own “Webby” holiday ideas in the comments, you may provide me with some creative energy to do something completely different this year.
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