Facebook could meet all your requirements except names not being visible to others.

I'd go with a blog and use wordpress. It's extremely simple to use, and you can make it private and turn comments off.

This is not exactly what you're asking for, but I have found that the sites that help you track calories are the only thing that ever worked for me. if your DH is a believer in the calories in/calories out method, it would provide him an excellent tool to turn over to patients. I used calorieking.com but there are others now, and I think some tie into the Fitbit, etc. They have terrific databases, so you can either enter 1 hamburger patty, for example, or you can enter specific brands such as 1/s cup of Nabisco Wheat Thins -and they'll tell you how many calories you are consuming. Then you enter whatever activity you've managed to fit in that day, and they'll add it all up and tell you how much more or less you took in vs. consumed. For me, having it right there in black and what was an incentive NOT to eat something that I would then have to enter, and also an incentive to move, so that I could enter the activity.

Does your husband's practice have a patient portal? If so, you should be able to set something up through that.

MyFitnessPal is good. And he could always encourage them to try Weight Watchers, which has a proven track record.

What's wrong with public, if it helps people and they find it? No communication is exchanged. Patients may be prone to share the 'secret password' anyhow. Blogs can be tailored to the need, as well as free web site hosting (google it). Try a free photo hosting site with a private album. Best if your ISP provides free web space. I put up a web site for 10 years, but nobody could see it unless I gave them the URL. The options are immense, maybe you'll start/add to something. Good luck.

I used to blog with Livejournal. It seems to meet most of your needs except for membership. If you want the blog to be private then your husband's patients would need to establish an account.

Are these going to be your own developed recipes?

If not, why not a page on your husband's website (his Practice) with links to sites that already have healthy recipes? There are many, that give all the nutritional information that someone else has already figured out.

Nice of your husband to be concerned about his patients.

ML

This would be extremely easy to do.

If you know WordPress you could get it all done in about two working days. If not, there will be a learning curve but it won't be too terribly painful.

Will cost a few hundred dollars to DIY.

You need to choose your host. HostGator is a good option since you won't have tons of traffic or big, beefy content files. There are others, so check out your options carefully.

I've been thru a few WordPress themes and the best one I've found, that offers the most options for revisions to keep overall design fresh is from Envato/Themeforest it's called The7. http://goo.gl/Z1E8Uk

To control privacy of members and access to content you have two options, you can go LMS or MMS. LMS is Learning Management System plugin. It's what elearning sites use. MMS is Membership Management System plugin. It's what many coaching type sites use.

LMS plugin would be like LearnDash. MMS plugin would be like WishList.

All you do is install your plugin of choice, create your posts with content and images just like they're regular WordPress posts (or pages) and then use your LMS or MMS to identify the members that can have access to the content.

The super simpler way to do this would be to just install WordPress and password protect each and every post. I'd use one password for all. Give the passwords to patients and call it done.

The problem with that, however, is you won't have any control beyond that. You won't have a list. You won't know what accessed what, etc. And as you get more experienced with WordPress and plugins, you won't be able to go back and capture membership information - that train will have already left the station, so to speak.

Plus, you're going to have to deal with people losing the password. A LMS or MMS system allows a member to reset passwords on their own.

So, you're better off, IMO, going with some kind of membership route right from the beginning so you at least have the option of doing things with the email list it builds for you. Like, sending a blast of information to the whole group of patients is probably the most basic thing you would want to do.

The best strategy is to build it for growth down the road even if you think it will always be small.

If you hire someone to build a site for you, my guess is it will cost anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000.

One of the most important things to establish FIRST is how you want your permalinks formatted. It's easy to do from the WP dashboard. Settings>Permalinks and then choose a radial button. You want short permalinks:

Like This: http://doctordiet.com/sample-post/
Not This: http://doctordiet.com/2014/09/21/sample-post/

Hope that helps.

My thoughts are the same as Maddelee's. There are countless blogs and websites which cater to healthy eating with amazing recipes and advice. Ditto exercise videos, etc. Unless you are looking for a creative outlet, I'd suggest he either give handouts or link through his site to blogs, websites, fitness tracking sites, WW's or any other weight loss group he believes in, etc. At some point, it becomes the patient 's responsibly to "just do it".

As a teacher, I use edublogs which I think is powered by wordpress. I use it to communicate with parents. Parents get a notification every time I add something new to the blog.

It costs about $50 a year and you get privacy (have to sign in with a password). It allows everything I need as a teacher. I post pictures, hot links, I've got a few widgets (things like a visitor counter, a book shelf). On the sidebar, I post important dates and links to relevant websites.

The first blog I made did take about 5 hours to put together, but once you do it, it is done and easy to maintain and update. I created a new blog this year because I changed grades and it only took me about 2-3 hours to set up.

My first thought was the same as OldFixer's: Why not public? You'll help more people that way.

I set up a couple of Wordpress blogs for myself years ago. It was easy. They've probably made it even easier now.

Thank you for all the great ideas! I've decided to go through Wordpress as some of you have suggested. Thanks for that one, as I'd never heard of it before!

As to why I won't go public, I think first and foremost, because I don't want to be tied down to a public blog. I don't want to be obligated to post something every day or even every week if I don't feel like it. (2) I'd like to use my husband's name, for the benefit of his patients, but I like my/our privacy, too. It will be fine if his patients want to give it out to their friends or family. I feel the same with my family doing it. I'm just not comfortable putting it out there for the world at large. And (3) I don't want to answer questions or invite/ allow comments. It could infringe on patients' privacy: no names, no comment, no questions. I want to keep it as simple as possible for our patients to look for a recipe or meal idea, and I don't want them to have to join anything to do that.

I want to add all of my healthful recipes; add more as I discover them or create them; have a section of healthful substitutions (such as using unsweetened applesauce in place of oil when you're baking); along with blurbs of DH's eating healthfully advice. I'll have my close friend, a home ec teacher, check over everything before I post it.

If I do change my mind and decide to keep our names out of it, though, I'll let you all know.

Thank you also for the suggestions about Weight Watchers, calorie counters and other sites. I like that idea and will plan on adding links to them for our patients.
Lynn