How to Build a Memorial Website: A Practical Guide for Families, From the First Page to Keeping It for Years

A memorial website is one place online that keeps the story of someone who has passed away: who they were, photos from every period of their life, memories from the people who knew them, and the date of the memorial service. Most memorial websites today are built by the family itself, with no developer, in one evening. There are three ways to do it: a page on a memorial portal, your own site on a website builder, or a family platform where everyone adds. This guide goes through all three honestly, including the ones we do not offer, and then through what really matters: what goes on the site, how to gather it, and how to make sure it is still there in ten years.

Three ways to build a memorial website

• A page on a memorial portal (free to a few dollars): you sign up, fill in a name, dates, a photo and some text, and get a page with virtual candles and room for condolences. In Israel the longest-running one is Portal Zal (free, since 2006), alongside Memoriez and LifeCloud, which also sell QR plaques for the headstone. It is the fastest route, and it is enough for most families. The drawback: the template is fixed, and the page looks like every other page on the portal.
• Your own site on a website builder (a monthly plan, plus a domain): Wix, WordPress or Google Sites, with an address of your own, such as the family name. Full freedom over the design and structure, and the site can appear on Google under the person's name. What nobody says up front: someone has to pay the subscription and renew the domain every year. When the payments stop, the site goes down, and that is the most common reason memorial websites disappear.
• A family platform with a living album (a monthly subscription): here the site is not a page one person fills in, but a place the whole family brings material to through a link, and every photo gets the story behind it, narrated aloud. That is what we build at MemoAgent, and the details are at the end of this guide. The important difference to know up front: a page like this is private by default with us and does not appear on Google, because it is built for family and friends, not for visitors from search.

And if someone offers to build you a custom site: it costs thousands, and the right question is not what it costs today, but who will maintain it in three years, and where the passwords will be kept.

What goes on a memorial website

You do not need everything on day one. This order works, from most to least important:

1. Full name, dates and one good photo. Year of birth and of death, and if you wish, the Hebrew date too. The main photo is the one someone searching will recognise at once.
2. A few paragraphs about who they were. Not a résumé. What they loved, how they talked, a sentence they used to say. Three honest paragraphs are worth more than a page of titles. If it is hard to start, the 50 life story interview questions help even when you answer them on someone else's behalf.
3. Photos by life period, with a line on each. Childhood, the young years, family, the last years. A photo with no explanation is forgotten; a photo with "that summer at the lake, when he taught all of us to swim" stays. How to gather them from every phone in the family, in the photos guide.
4. Memories from others. Friends from the army, from work, neighbours. They remember sides the family never saw. A place where they can write, with the family's approval before anything is published.
5. Their voice, if it was kept. One WhatsApp voice message, a toast from a wedding video. The voice is the first thing that starts to fade. How to get recordings off the phone, in the WhatsApp guide.
6. The memorial date and the place of the grave. One line that saves dozens of phone calls every year.

How to gather material from the whole family without it scattering

The common mistake is that one person builds the site alone. They tire after a week, and the site is left with the photos they happened to have. What works:

• One link for everyone. Instead of twenty WhatsApp messages with photos that get compressed and lost in the group, one place where everyone uploads what they have.
• A focused request. "Send photos" does not work. "Three photos from your years with him, and a line on each" does.
• One person who approves. Everyone adds, but one or two people in the family decide what goes on the site. That prevents embarrassment and keeps the dignity.
• No waiting for perfection. Open before the thirtieth day with what you have, and add toward the first anniversary. A site that grows over time invites more people to add.

Privacy: who sees the site

Before uploading a single photo, choose between three options: public, which appears in search and anyone can reach; open by link, which anyone with the link can see but which does not appear on Google; or private, for invited people only. There is no single right answer. A site in memory of someone well known in the community should probably be public. A site with photos of children, personal letters or voice messages is better by link or private. And two small checks: do not publish the family's home address or phone number, and ask the people in a photo whether they agree, especially on a public site.

How to make sure the site lasts for years

A memorial website is built for the years after, not for the first week. Four things worth arranging now:

• At least two owners. The password and the account with two people in the family, not one. If there is a domain, the renewal on the card of someone who knows it is their job.
• A copy of the material with you. Every photo and recording on the site is also kept in a family folder, in two places. If the platform closes, the material does not go with it. That is what happened to HereAfter AI users when the service closed in 2026.
• Ask before you choose: can I download the material from here? What happens to the page if we stop paying? Who else sees the information?
• A QR plaque on the headstone, if you want one. Any plaque, from any vendor, can point to the site's fixed address. Whoever stands at the grave can see the face and hear the story.

And if you want more than a website

A memorial website keeps what was. Some families also want to keep hearing them. On MemoAgent the whole family uploads photos, stories, recordings and WhatsApp chats through one link, and every addition from a participant waits for the family's approval. From that material comes a memorial page with a living album that narrates every photo aloud, organised by life periods, and if the family wishes, a persona you can talk with, in their style, and if recordings were kept, in their voice. The page is private by default, opens only by link, and does not appear on Google. You can see an example page, and compare every other option in the complete guide to digital memorialization.

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