How to Create an Online Memorial Page for a Loved One

What a memorial page is

An online memorial page (or memorial website) is a page dedicated to someone who has died. Unlike a social media post, which disappears down the feed within a day, it stays in one fixed place: you can return to it on the anniversary, send it to a cousin abroad, and show it to grandchildren twenty years from now. It does not replace the grave, the memorial service or the photo album. It connects them.

What to include

• The name and the dates: the full name, including a maiden name or the nickname everyone used, and the dates of birth and death (and the Hebrew dates, if the family keeps them).
• The life story: not a CV but a story of where they came from, what they did, whom they loved, what made them laugh. A few paragraphs are enough.
• Photographs from every stage of life: not only the last few years. A childhood photo, the wedding, the grandchildren. Write under each one who is in it and when.
• Their voice: a voicemail you kept, a birthday video, a toast at a wedding. These are what people miss most, and they are the first things to be lost.
• Documents and handwriting: a letter, a recipe in their hand, a certificate, a page from a diary.
• The small things: the phrase they always said, the song they loved, the dish they made every holiday.
• Other people’s memories: what friends, colleagues and distant relatives remember. Often it is exactly what the close family never knew.

How to create one, step by step

1. Start with the basics: the name, the dates and one photograph. You can stop there and come back tomorrow; the page does not need to be perfect to begin.
2. Write the story: the easiest way is to answer questions. Where were they born, what was their work, what did they do on a Sunday? If the words are hard to find, the guide to writing a eulogy helps here too.
3. Gather photographs from the family: everyone holds part of the album, on a phone or in a cupboard. How to collect memories and photographs from family
4. When the page is ready, open it to others and share the link: in the family group chat, in the funeral notice, in the invitation to the memorial service.
5. Invite other family members to keep the page with you, so it does not all fall on one person.
6. Approve the memories that arrive, and find out things you did not know.

How to choose a memorial website: six questions

There are quite a few memorial sites, and they differ more than they first appear to. Before uploading your mother’s photographs, it is worth asking:

1. Who decides what is published? On some sites anyone can post on a page and it appears at once. On a memorial page, it is better if the family approves first.
2. Can you download everything? If you ever want to leave, or the site closes, can you get the original photographs and every word back in one click?
3. A subscription or one payment? A memorial page is meant to last for years. A monthly or yearly subscription means that one day somebody forgets to renew.
4. Who can see the page? Is it public from the first minute, or can you build it quietly and open it when it is ready?
5. Does it handle your language and calendar? For a Jewish family: is the Hebrew date calculated correctly, including a death after sunset, and is there a reminder before the yahrzeit?
6. What happens in a dispute? If another relative opens a page for the same person, or believes the page should be theirs, is there a proper process, or does whoever signed up first win?

How it works on Place a Stone

We built Place a Stone around those questions. You create a page for free and it stays private (only you can see it) for as long as you are filling it in, with no time limit. When it is ready, a single payment of $39 (₪99 in Israel) opens it: you can send it, people can add memories and light a candle, other family members can keep it with you, and you choose whether people searching the name on Google can find it too. There is no subscription and no renewal fee.

• Every memory someone sends waits for your approval before it appears.
• At any moment you can download the full archive: the original photographs, every word, and a page that opens without an internet connection.
• The Hebrew date is calculated for you, and an email arrives a week before each yahrzeit when the page keeps Hebrew dates: switch on “Hebrew dates and the yahrzeit” in its settings (a page in Hebrew, or one created from the yahrzeit calculator, has it on already).
• Before a page is published we check whether one already exists for the same person, and offer to join it. If a relative believes the page should be in their care, there is a proper process for that.
• The page works in five languages (Hebrew, English, Russian, French and Spanish), each family in its own.

See an example page before you start.