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Would You Let Your Child Have Their Own Website - It's Becoming A Common Request

It has to be one of the questions I get asked most often, to be fair it's not surprising at all considering the popularity of MySpace, FaceBook, Bebo et al. Once kids have had a taste of posting stuff online the natural progression is that they then want their own website. So the question is, should you let your son or daughter have their own website?

There are a fair number of considerations that need to be taken into account with this before you even think about the practicalities. How old is your child? Can you trust them to do as you say? Once you've paid out is it a fad that will be forgotten after a week? If you're happy that your child will treat it as a learning experience and has the maturity to understand that having a website is quite a big thing then I don't see any problem with it, my daughter has a website. The proviso to this is that it has to be done the right way, a way that maintains your child's privacy and gives you some control over what is being posted and who is communicating with your child through their website. Ultimately you know best for your child. With that in mind though, if you do decide to give your child their own website, this is my short guide to setting up a website for your child the right way:-

  • Domain Registration - Anybody who has access to a recognised payment method (Visa, Paypal etc) can buy a domain if it is available. I'd recommend that you buy the domain on behalf of your child. Go with one of the recognised big players such as GoDaddy.
  • Domain Privacy - Do you know that you can easily find out who owns any domain? Their name, address, phone number, e-mail address? This information is all public and can be found using something called a Whois lookup. Whilst registering the domain in your name stops your childs details being exposed there is a fair chance you leave at the same address right? This is where domain privacy comes in. If you buy your domain through GoDaddy you can select to use domain privacy, this means that the details that are available to "everybody" will be the details from the privacy service and not yours. It costs a little extra but it absolutely protects your (and your childs) details from the casual passer by. Domain registration is very cheap (usually less than $10 per year), there's no excuse for not using domain privacy where a website for your kids is involved.
  • Hosting - In order to put content on the world wide web you'll need some hosting. The hosting is the space where you can upload files. Now I know that a lot of parents aren't techy orientated so I want to make this as simple as possible. If your child has to create a website from scratch they'll soon get bored when it doesn't have all the features of Facebook. Trust me on this, HTML holds no appeal for the next generation of wannabe webmasters! There are lots of content management systems out there that let people have websites that can then be customised to your hearts content. The best one for your purposes is Wordpress. There are literally thousands of free templates and plugins (extensions to do everything you can imagine) available. What does this have to do with hosting? Simple. There are 1 or 2 hosts that allow "one click" setup of Wordpress. One such host is Bluehost, so for only $8 (about £5-£6) a month you have everything you need with the easiest possible setup. If you're not familiar with FTP, MySQL and other such things this is ideal.
  • Setting Up Wordpress - I'd strongly recommend that you have control over everything that your child wants to publish online. Wordpress makes this really easy because it has a number of different user types. The main admin user should be you - an adult. You can then create an author account for your child. This allows them to login and create content BUT very importantly YOU have to then publish the content before it appears on the web (it's only 2 clicks). This makes sure that nothing finds its way on to the internet that you don't approve. Is this work for you? Yes. But heh, whoever said bringing up kids was a hand off experience? Online it's no different.
  • Feedback - Comments on Wordpress automatically have to be approved and you'll be presented with a list of comments awaiting moderation when you sign into Wordpress. This way you can see exactly what feedback and comments are being left on your childs website and can easily delete anything that is not appropriate. Rest assured that Wordpress also has it's own spam filtering plugin called Akismet that will do most of the hard work for you making sure that comments advertising the latest thrills and pills get nowhere near your childs website.

At this point you're probably thinking that this all sounds like a lot of work. I'm not going to lie, it does take a little setting up but trust me, this is the best way I've come up with of giving your child a website in a safe and secure way, With your moderation your childs details won't be available online but they'll be free to have their own website, that looks how they want and has the features they want. The expense is minimal and it can be a great learning experience!