What Is "Family Wish Lists"?
The Family Wish Lists is a website where all family members can put a list of things that they wish they had - similar to a "Dear Santa"
letter where kids have traditionally told Santa Claus what they wanted
for Christmas. Then, other family members can use Family Wish Lists to help them when they are deciding on a gift to give someone else in the family. Although Christmas is the holiday used to show how this works, the Family Wish Lists website is useful for birthdays, anniversaries, and any other gift-giving event or holiday.
Now we'll take a look at how it works. Let's consider the Smith family and how
they used Family Wish Lists for Christmas 2005. In this example,
Bill Smith has decided on a few things he would like for Christmas and
has put them on his wish list, as shown in the sample display below. Notice the "Add Item",
"Edit", and "Del" buttons on the right side of Bill's list. By clicking
on these buttons Bill can add more items to his list or edit or delete existing items.
Now for the fun part. When someone else looks at Bill's wish list, they see the display shown below. In this example, Kelly has signed into the Family Wish Lists website and clicked on Bill's name (in the list of members) and she sees the items that Bill has put on his wish list and she also sees the comments that other family members have made about the items. As you can see, some of the comments are practical (like "Done", meaning the person has picked that item to give to Bill) and some of the comments are humorous. If Kelly wants to add a comment to one of the items on Bill's list she clicks on the "Add Comment" button and enters her comment. Kelly's comment will automatically show her name in parenthesis at the end of the comment.
If Kelly wants to look at any other family members wish list she clicks on that person's name in the panel labeled "Member List". Of course, if Kelly clicks on "Kelly" on the Member List she will only see her list of items but not the comments.
That's It! There are many other features on the website, like the calendar showing all of the family member's birthdays and a list of important holidays that should be remembered, but the creation of your personal wish list, and the comments made by others, are the key features of Family Wish Lists.
You may be wondering how family members access their family's wish lists. Every person using the Family Wish Lists has a unique username and password. User's log in to the website using their username and password and they are able to see the wish lists for their family members but not the wish lists for any other families. In addition, each family has a designated Wish List Manager who can make corrections to lists and comments, if needed.
Click on "How To Get Started", on the menu bar at the top of this page, to see how your family can create it's Family Wish Lists website.