Forum Moderators: phranque
He is a bright kid and he is very excited about getting his website. I am pretty sure he will pick up HTML and WYSIWYG use pretty easy. And the concept of what a website really is is not a problem. Tonight he asked me how many pages a website could have. When I told him as many as he like, he ran for a piece of paper so he could plan his website out. Imagine that, he already has more of a concept of information architecture than half the people I have worked with on websites in the past.
Anyway, what sort of things should I consider in making this a safe & fun experience for him? Anything I should add to his site or limit on his site in light of the fact that he is only 10?
I think it is great that you are doing this! As an expat mom with homeschoolers, my teens have been "doing" their own website for a couple of years now.
I highly suggest that you stay involved and "steer" the themes and topics of your child's website. Ours started out as simple as posting middle school homework assignments, poetry, creative writing, and research papers.
Pretty soon they were so darned good at the HTML that I "steered" them into doing projects on the rainforest animals and national parks in our tiny foreign country, and so forth. A couple of months ago I let them put adsense on their site, and they are really excited about the pizza money. Money is such a great motivator for young business people - think Junior Achievement.
They want to start their own forum, but I have really been skeptical about that.
In other words, let your child roll with his/her favorite subjects, but stay intimately involved. It is a good chance to teach them a lot about ethics and business practices, like "don't steal other people's content, do your own research and write your own papers!"
Best of luck.
a safe & fun experience for him
He may want things that will make you cringe. A page counter, for example. Remember, its fun for him. Maybe you can encourage him to develop a resource page; IBL's = PR = #1... (sometimes).
Another thing to bear in mind is that if you want to publish, you need a thick skin. Total strangers have said some fairly awful things to me over the years about my writing and websites, even though most people are nice about them. I suspect this is normal for most webmasters. You should warn him in advance that he will encounter people who are ignorant, jealous or just plain nasty. No matter how hard he tries, he won't please everyone with his site and he shouldn't be too shocked if people are rude. Not everyone will realise that he's only 10, (even if it's written on every page) and will judge his site as an adults.
I would avoid letting him have a forum until he can really understand things like libel, copyright, and trolls, and can spot a spammer a mile away.
Personally Id encourage it like you would if they took up a sport etc and go with him when he sets it up and watch it, just like you would a schools sports event.
There are some weirdos out there on the web but excercise due caution and common sense and he'll probably be safer on the web than his mates.
Its good he's planning and not rushing in that a very special ability there.
Fast forward - How my son makes $13000 per month with adsense and he's only 13.
Not everyone will realise that he's only 10, (even if it's written on every page)
I wouldn't write that on any page, if it's intended to be a website with any sort of ambition. I guess it's different if he just wants to make a website or blog about his personal activities and interests.
Keep in mind that his actions, approved by you, may filter up to whomever actually owns the website. (company, you personally, etc.) I'm speaking about liability here, but it's an issue you should probably bring up with your lawyer and your accountant.
Not everyone will realise that he's only 10, (even if it's written on every page)
I wouldn't write that on any page, if it's intended to be a website with any sort of ambition.
That probably came out wrong. I don't suggest that he does write this, and from a safety point of view it might be a bad idea. Just that he'll be judged as an adult, and he'll probably get some undeserved criticism as a result.
I should have mentioned above that I have always had the rule that the kids have NO personal contact info on their website. Any spam comes only to webmaster(me).
That is why I have not yet let them have a forum - no blog either, unless you disable all comments - but even then you get auto-bot generated pron and po#ker stuff. Best to stick with static html, no contact info until kids have learned the ropes.
.
Not to say he won't, but being excited about it and doing it to completion are two different things even adults find themselves challenged by.
In some ways it may be hard but in other ways it will be a great and rewarding learning experience as well, and I think it will be ok.
There is some kind of Internet rule about being 13-years of age (supposedly a law but I am not sure)
You are thinking about the Children’s Internet Protection Act, I believe. That is more about the resposibilities of website owners in regards to information presented to and collected from children under the age of 13. It does not affect the operation of a website operated by a child under 13 (unless they want to collect information from their peers).
I am not so much worried about the website being done. I will sit with him to make sure at least a few pages gets up so that I know he is able to do basic HTML and understands how a WYSIWYG works and how to FTP. I never expected this to be a 100+ page completed thing. It is more organic, a way for him to work with the medium when he pleases and with kids you would not believe how enthusiastic they can get when doing something if they find it interesting. I fully expect that he will go through phases where the site will go untouched for weeks, maybe months, at a time. Children's interests are like this. Heck, my interests are like this. ;)
I had planned on putting a blog with the comments turned off (I always turn them off for my sites b/c I really don't want to read idiotic comments from bored jerks :) ) so that he could keep an journal.
I set up the whois on the domain without privacy, for a very particular reason. I put the address of a friend's and the email as mine because if someone is trying to find the owner, I wanted to know about it. If I added privacy that would make it more likly they would go looking through other means.
I think I will keep him from putting his email addy on their. I had debated either disallowing it from the site or setting up forwarding so that I would get every email that hit the account. I think just keeping it off completely is the best option.
