Hi Elizabeth ~
You might consider setting up an email list instead. This makes it easy for people to join and leave and easy for them to get their messages.
Related to this you can set up a free group on Yahoo! (groups.yahoo.com) that will be delivered via email and displayed on the web as files. In addition you can have files to download and profiles. Most importantly you can set it to be a private group. So no one gets in without be approved. Some like privacy like this. Best of all it's all free and Yahoo! takes care of the technical end of things.
I only know this cause I belong to a couple of private groups on Yahoo! and it's work out well.
Hope that helps a bit.
~ Dan Butler
The book that should have come with your computer...