Increasingly, genealogists are building personal communities online to make it easier to stay in touch with their extended family, as well as facilitate the family history research. Some excellent sites have been launched that make this extremely easy to do by providing essentially pre-fabricated web sites, along with a specified amount of free storage. These sites take only minutes to set up and require no previous experience. They also furnish a variety of features such as calendars, family tree building, file, photo and video uploading, and much more.

The catch to all this? Generally, your online community will be on the receiving end of some advertising. Also, for those who like designing their own web sites, the standard templates may be more restrictive than you would like. But if you aren't a web wizard and don't mind some ads, this may be an ideal solution for you. Here are a few of the better known companies hosting such sites: