Kids Web Sites – safety and responsibility
Internet parents are not going to be successful in keeping their children isolated from the “community sites” such as MySpace or FaceBook. If their friends are using those sites, then your children will want to use them too.
But, you can minimize their exposure and encourage a sense of independence by giving them their own site. The fact that they can have a web site at johnny.yourdomname.com.
That method is using a subdomain. For example, there is a domain isyournametoo.com. The purpose is to create subdomains to create a community for children such that there will be a john.isyournametoo.com and a sally.isyournametoo.com. This is not the approach to get kids their own domain name, as these sites will be shared by many kids with the same first name.
Rather, the subdomain method would work well if you register a domain for the family such as magonigles.com or some variation (themagonigles.com, magonigles.us, and so on). Then you would use subdomains to give each member of the family their own true web presence as in jodie.magonigle.com, frank.magonigle.com and so on.
Or you can go one better and get your kids their own complete domain for a few dollars.
There is a big difference between having a page a some-mass-site.com/kidsname or even having a subdomain off the family domain and having a site that is jimmysmith.com. Many firstnamelastname.com domains are still available and if not, there are variations that are still very personal with a sense of ownership.
It could be jsmith.net or jjsmith.com or — not even a domain that uses the child’s name. There is a wonderful opportunity for you to sit down with your child saying, “I think it’s time we got you your own domain. I’m not sure what suits you best so let’s pick one together. You seem to spend a lot of time on World of Warcraft. Would like something like JimsWoW.com? Or maybe she has a character she plays in a game and she loves that character. Maybe the domain name BerthaTheDwarf.com is available.
Of course, if you a Member of the Secure Surfing Organization, we can do a lot of the work for you (through our sponsor, Walking Dolphins), finding out what is available and suggesting alternatives that meet the same goal.
Doing it Yourself is not really complicated; it’s just time consuming,.
You can register it for between $7.00 and $10.00 depending the extension you choose and where you decide to do your registration. Most providers will give you at least one free domain name if you sign up to have your web site hosted by them. But remember you are now paying for a hosting service and not just the domain name. This means you will have monthly payments for the hosting service.
That’s why you can easily find domain names being offered for what appears to be low prices like “$3.99” or even “1.99” but they all require you to sign a hosting contract with monthly fees.
You should be careful when choosing a host and not pick one just because they advertise a free domain or a low cost domain. The real money is made in monthly hosting fees and upselling additional features. If you are a member of the Secure Surfing Organization, you can hosting from Walking Dolphins for one simple annual fee of $49.00 and that includes a pre-installed basic web site that you or your kids can change, customize or otherwise deal with in any way you choose. Note that the fee does not include a free domain.
Moreover, when you get your hosting through Walking Dolphins, you get an immediate included e-mail address and unlimited number of additional e-mail addresses for a $1.00, once-in-a-lifetime setup fee. That’s literally just to pay the cost of someone going into the server management system and creating the e-mail account. There’s no additional charge for as long as you host with Walking Dolphins.
So if your child’s gamer name is ThorTheMagnificent, you could get him ThorTheMagnificent.com for a web site and he could receive his mail at j...@ThorTheMaginificent.com or webm...@ThorTheMagnificent.com or any other name he chose.
By getting your child involved in her own web site, you will be able to give her a sense of independence — and some psychological separation — from places like MySpace. You can instill some pride by pointing out that they have their own site while other kids are just tagging along in the same old format at MySpace.
Depending on the child’s age, you might also work with her or him to identify interests that they might want to play with on their web site. If the child likes dinosaurs, help them find free dinosaur material they can put up. If they like space, there are a lot of fantastic images available from NASA.
If they are into a particular game, let them go with it and build a great Thor site.
Because Walking Dolphins works with free and Open Source Software, there are easy to use tools to build up web sites and the system can provide more sophisticated tools for older children and teens. By going the Walking Dolphins route, you are also saved from having to buy additional web building software and are assured that you can always take your web site content down from their servers and port to any other provider you like. You are never dependent on the supplier for accessing or moving your site.
