would any of you have any (free) recommendations for webspace to built a website only viewable by log in?

kind of like photobucket with the guest login account.

I don't use free webspace anymore since it only costs like $50/year to get a paid one with databases, a domain, etc. these days, but one thing that I can guarantee is that your free webspace will have a distracting banner ad at the top.

it's only for a small family project, so a banner is fine.

I know of no free web space that will allow you to password protect and also build a custom website on.
What's involved in your project? Could you just use something like Blogger? You can protect the blog and limit viewing only to specific people.

the way i understand it, it's supposed to be real simple, just a bunch of pics and mini biographies of family members. i know about Blogger, but that's more forum style than just a plain website no?

Well, it kinda depends on how you do it. You can sorta use it as a content management system, but only very basically..like you could use each post as a "page" of the website. There may be a better solution out there though, I'm just not sure.

There is a really cool free family tree site you can password protect, and you can have photos and bios of people if you wanted.
http://www.geni.com

I dunno, just rackin' my brain.

this might actually be exactly what they need, thanks .

I used this one several years ago:

http://free.prohosting.com/