Making my Website Useful

Many teachers have a classroom website with varying levels of success. How have you made your classroom website more useful to students, families, and other educators? What gaps still remain? 

I made my classroom website 2 years ago when I started teaching at St. James Middle School. When I first made it, it was really just a place to post announcement, special dates, helpful websites, and had a place to contact me. It wasn't very successful. I would assume most parents didn't even know I had a website. I told my students about it in class, but most of them didn't take advantage of it. After all, it didn't have much to offer!

This past year I included a page where I posted videos. I had just learned what a flipped classroom was. I decided to use it as a place where students and parents could go to view the lesson we had that day. I got an amazing reaction from parents and students alike. They loved getting to have the extra help when they got home to work on their homework. Parents loved being able to help their children. They knew what was expected of them. I feel like it was an amazing leap for my website. Now that I have more parents looking at my site, I also have more parent and student contact through the site.

One thing that is still lacking from my site that I want to incorporate is a blog or discussion board. I really want my students to participate in discussions this coming year. I am still trying to work that out and figure out how to use a discussion board in a math class. Any ideas?