I’m not big on recognizing sites that have costs involved — especially when the sites are dysfunctional — but there’s a way to get value from The Remembering Site without spending money.

The idea of the site is to provide a template for writing life stories — and then charging a fee to print a book with that story.

Here’s the dysfunctionality — I first visited in April and went back in June. Apparently, The Remembering Site is “powered by” Word Clay, an on-demand publishing company. When I tried to register on The Remembering Site, I was repeatedly taken back to the same opening page with no opportunity to register. A live chat was available, so I learned through the chat that I needed to register through Word Clay. There’s now a link to Word Clay on The Remembering Site, but no indication that Word Clay is where you need to register. Based on the live chat instructions, I registered on Word Clay and then came back and used that log-on with The Remembering Site.

Then I was able to download The Remembering Site’s template, which is filled with great questions for telling life stories. You can get a lot out of those questions without taking the extra step of having your book published, although I’m sure many users will choose to publish their books.

But the site needs to get its act together.