Does anyone create private pages?
 

I recently shot a Save the Date video for a couple. When i was finished I uploaded onto my site as a someone private page (you would need the specific URL). I also placed some nap shots on the page from the video shoot.
I was thinking that if I was to actually advertise it as their personal wedding website. Where they could include their private message to their friends and family, gift registry, and wedding info.
It seems that it would be a win win for bother sides. Me for all of the traffic that your site would receive, and them because you would be without the normal url that's about 1,000 characters long.
Just curious if anyone is doing something similar, and if there is a downside.

I have done this and have not found a down side other then the little extra work that it requires but that is accounted for in my bill. I will even do a password protection if they desire it.

I offer them, however, I am now finding most people are more than happy to just have a copy of their Highlights online with the likes of Vimeo.

Here is the demo page I show. Spent a little while making a page up that matches the look/feel of my site. Now, I just tweek it for each couple.

Gallery

Alastair, very classy site... The one I created was a lot less "fancy" but the couple enjoyed it. It only took me about an extra hour to create... I'm thinking of doing more of this in the future.

You'd be amazed how fast Google (and other search engines) will index that page. Then it's no longer a "private page". Make sure you have a robots.txt file that disallows indexing of the page.

I had an irate client call me when one of their clients found themselves in a video on one of my "private pages". I've since started blocking web crawlers from indexing those pages.

Anyway, back to the original topic - I've tried selling the wedding sites, but never had a bite.

Chris awesome advice... I did notice this when I was testing this out. My test page popped up well before any of my other pages did. I took out the key words to make it harder to find. I'll look into the robots.txt for the future.

Hi Chris,

I'm not sure I understand why anyone would be irate. Personal video highlights and photos are pasted all over public blogs. I have it in my contract that what I capture can be used for marketing purposes and only a few times in the past 15 years has anyone checked and initialed a box that disallows that. In my experience these highlights are a surefire way to improve your search engine placement. Hundreds of unique visitors hitting a page within your domain will definitely do that, but only if it can be indexed and tracked. A tip toward that end is to load and link the page to an indexed page at least a week before the highlights is added.