Have you ever considered setting up an online memorial website to help remember and celebrate the life of a loved one?

St Clare’s Hospice have come together with memorial website specialists MuchLoved to offer you the ability to create your own website dedicated to a loved one who has died.

MuchLoved is a charity set up to help bereaved people following a death and they have set up a memorial website service for us that is both easy to use and sensitively designed along with comprehensive privacy settings.

The Benefits of a memorial website service

This new type of online memorial can have a number of benefits:

• There are no geographical or time constraints.
• Family living far away can share their memories in one place and ‘visit’ whenever they want, unbound by closing times or transport requirements.
• And while there can be both words of remembrance and photographs, favourite songs and even video clips can also be added to illustrate and bring each particular memory to life. In this way, many chapters of stories, recollections, thoughts and life events can be built up to create a really special memorial and legacy.
• An additional benefit that is sometimes overlooked is the way in which a memorial website can bring those affected by a death closer together by encouraging support and conversation. A place where friends and family can all contribute their pictures, tell their stories or express their feelings of loss can help everyone manage their grief together.
• A large number of MuchLoved websites are also being created in the immediate aftermath of a death and as a result are often used to provide helpful details about the funeral and then afterwards to record poems and readings chosen for the service. The website address has in some cases even been printed on the order of service.

The process to create your memorial

In order to make the service accessible to everyone the process to create your memorial is kept very simple and no computer programming or website experience is necessary. There is a quick five-step process to follow, taking just a few minutes, and then you can view and even share your website immediately.

All memorials are given a unique web address that is yours to keep. For example a tribute to Jack Smith might be jack.smith.muchloved.com, but you can select your own name to use (such as a nickname) if you prefer.

After this initial creation process, you can add content or make changes to it continually including designs and appearance. There are no limits to this so that you can always keep your tribute looking exactly as you want it.

Addressing security and access concerns

As a memorial website is your own personal expression of feelings and memories, it is clearly fundamentally important to give you the ability to set the level of privacy you want. In other words to let you control who can visit, what visitors are able to see and what they can add to your site.

As a result, after you first create your MuchLoved website, no one else has access to view or make changes. It is left to you to invite friends and family only when, and if, you are ready to do so, using an ‘Invite Manager’ which is provided. So whilst public access can be enabled if you wish, this is not done automatically.

As well as deciding who has access to view your website, you can also decide to review all visitor contributions first, before they are added to your site, so that there is no concern over the possibility of receiving unwanted postings. You can even request an email alert to be sent to you whenever a new contribution has been made!

Hosting services and costs

In order to be able to keep a beautiful and lasting record and legacy for both present and future generations, MuchLoved hosts all websites so that they are always online whenever you want to visit over the days, months and years after your loss.

In order to ensure long term reliable hosting, MuchLoved uses the services of The Data Trust which is a not-for-profit company that specialises in the long-term hosting of content meant for publication on the internet.

The standard option is to have your website hosted online for 10 years and this is free, funded by charitable donations to MuchLoved, however you can also request that your website be hosted permanently (in perpetuity) with a small fee to cover the extra long term costs for doing this. This means that you can create a tribute and legacy that will last forever…

Finding out more about MuchLoved

MuchLoved is a registered charity founded by Jonathan Davies after the death of his brother Philip at University in 1995. You can find out more about the background to MuchLoved and read their current news by visiting MuchLoved.

MuchLoved also has a comprehensive online resources area to give help and guidance to bereaved people and also to signpost specialist bereavement organisations and charities that may also be able to help.

We hope that you will consider joining in this very positive initiative by visiting MuchLoved and creating your own special memorial website.