Tell me how good or bad of an idea this is...

I am thinking about alternative options to keep in touch with family when having regional / personal SHFT.

Then it struck me, I could set up a webpage with a members only section where I could post updates for family to read, run a blog or a twitter style feed on it and have have secure doc storage for anything we would need.

Of course need to be able to access the internet and need to be dependant on your family not passing out the password.

Would have current industry standard Encryption on the site.

So how good / bad of an idea is this?  What am I not thinking of?

I am figuring this would run $150 a year.

I own my own website and I can say that you pricing is about correct, but I think there is a flaw in your plan.  If the scenario did occur you probably wouldn't have access to the web if it was widespread.   If it wasn't then you'd just able to use normal channels of communication.  That being said owning a domain is a nice thing.  You own all the data and can do what you want.

Ham Radio.  It's worth the bit of learning and test taking to be able to communicate all over the world without an infrastructure.  That is your SHTF communications.  Sure, licensing won't matter, but the knowledge is important.

I like the idea of Ham Radio but it might be unlikely that you can get the rest of your family to embrace this type of comm.  I'm just starting to look into Wordpress as a tool to do a website. Wordpress seems very blog-oriented as opposed to the "generic" web site that I want to do; however, the "generic" route nevertheless seems real doable. I'm under the impression that your web hosting company needs to support Wordpress. (It seems that due to the pervasiveness of Wordpress, that's almost a given these days.) It sounds to me like the Wordpress "blog personality" would be what you are looking for.

Or start your own bulletin board...like a miniature Arf. ... vBulletin, if it's still around, might be a tool to do this. I know there are others as well.

Insofar as doc storage, I would think Dropbox or SpiderOak might work for you.

Free Dropbox account. All family has the login info. Type a basic document from your smart phone or computer, upload. 

Done, costs nothing. All parties instantly notified when a change has occurred.

If shtf, a hosted website may not be available.

If nothing else, power.  Every single data center well tell you that they have service contracts that guarantee that they will have an indefinite supply of diesel to keep their generators running.

You and I both know that in a true shtf, there just isn't enough diesel, and there wouldn't be enough distribution to keep them all running.

And that's assuming that all of the network good between them and you actually DO stay running.  They may very well be down or swamped.  Look at nyc during 9/11, even with the services fully operational, cell phone towers were so swamped that the service was virtually unusable.

Feel free to use it as one layer of storage, but don't make it your only layer.

+1.
Ham radio is the only communications option (excluding smoke signals) that does not require any infrastructure. You can communicate locally or half way around the world with a simple radio, a wire antenna and a 12 VDC power source. A solar battery and a charger will keep it operational indefinitely.

IMHO, it's not a good idea to rely on any form of communication that requires the Internet, in SHTF event.

Create an email account, Google or the like. Give family password.
Communicate through the email account by emails held as drafts or sent to yourself.

relying on something out of your control for shtf comms is a poor idea.

Dropbox is a great idea!

Of course with the limitations of any internet dependent resource...

I have a  yahoo "private group".  My group of friends use it for communication, file sharing, photos etc.  We are also
all hams.  Is it secure?  Probably to the normal public, as it is a private group but I don't trust it, as far as big brother goes.
It works for what we want it to do.  In the end however, I believe a per-determined priority list of frequencies on the 2 meter
side of the radio is what one will need for communication, given you are all in the same vicinity.  If we happen to be dealing with
an EMP, all bets are off however.

If you don't already do all of this stuff and would have to learn, don't bother.

Also, you will be surprised at the lack of participation or fucks by anybody else you may wish to communicate with. They'll say it's a good idea, but they'll never use it.

Make a family / friends Facebook group and use that instead. (Or Google+, or use twitter or Gab or whatever.)

One plus for the website or anything is that if the folks affected can get a text out to someone, that someone with normal power and internet can post an update on the website or whatever.

During a lot of the hurricane stuff the phone system gets overloaded, but the texts often make it.

I do agree getting everyone to participate will be the hard part.  One uncle of mine has a whole list he sends out with everyone's email, phone, and mailing address.  Just keeping it up to date is a pain at times.

To some extent the website could work if you are doing the hard part.  

My extended family is all across the country, so it is unlikely everyone will have issues at the same time.  So someone being able to text they are safe would let another person put a quick update up and the larger extended family would know that the person in the mainly affected area is safe.

Given time more info would be nice.

I don't know how dropbox would compare to texting.