What To Do If Your Kid Wants To Start a Website

It should not come as a surprise that once children discover the internet, they want to learn how to create a website. Well, sometimes they are inspired to create something or have this idea they want to explore. You just never know where your kids may lead to so why don’t you help create a website with the simple steps below. However, it is also good that you know how important creating your kid’s website can be useful.

These days, creating a personal website is pretty easy. You don’t need to know about web hosting or code—the newest kids on the block are hosted profile pages with templates you can fill in with photos, links, and text about yourself. You don’t even have to have tons of content for subpages—just one landing page is all you need to stake out your spot on the web.

Why You Should Create a Website For Your Kid

1. You Control Your Branding

Most personal website services allow you to customize everything from background photos to fonts and text placement—so, unlike LinkedIn’s uniform profile, your personality and brand can shine through. Hence, if your kid has something she is doing like a business or a creative activity or anything at all that he or she wants the world to know about, they could have one. When someone finds you, they’ll have an instant, visual representation of who you are.

2. It’s an Instant Portfolio

People are visual, so the more you can show (rather than tell), the better. Your resume may say that you “built a company blog following of 15,000 engaged readers,” but with your personal site, you can take someone straight to the blog and show why it’s so engaging and what sets your work apart. By featuring work samples, sites you’ve worked on, articles you’ve written, whatever, your personal homepage can act as a digital portfolio of your online work and identity.

3. It Gives the world a Better Idea of Who You Are

Much like social media, what you post or add to your kid’s website defines who they are, whether you want it to or not. Having professional, family-friendly photos and blog posts will show anyone you’re enthusiastic and passionate about what you do. If your kid is going to feature his personal website on his resume or have it be “his name” dot com, make sure there is nothing on there you wouldn’t want others to see. But taking the time to make one, can give you an advantage over his mates.

4. You Can Showcase Your Talent

Websites are great for bragging about your talents. Your kid’s website can be their portfolio to show off to potential clients or customers what they can do. Whether you’re a photographer, writer, or even a landscaper, documenting any work you have done will help you in a long run.

5. It’ll Help You Build Valuable Skills

As technology continues to advance beyond our imaginations, it’s important to stay on top of the trend. Kids are very tech savvy and with no time your kid will begin to operate more complex technology than you. Businesses are becoming more dependent on technology than ever before; knowing a thing or two about how to operate a computer and manage a website can be a golden ticket to the good life. Having a website will you keep your kid in front of a computer, which means he or she will be learning new things frequently and might reach out to professionals to learn even more rather than just watching YouTube videos. Once you’ve created the website and your kid can handle it for a while, you’ll be able to confidently say you know how to create and they know how to manage a website and its content. That’s a big deal today for both kids and parents.

6. You Can Use It as a Back-Up Plan

Like I said, having your own website can teach you a lot about computers and web development. If your kid has a career chosen for themselves but they decide to go in a different direction, they will have some knowledge to get started in a new field. They can even decide to go to school, or go back to school, to pursue a computer science degree or similar. Even if when their heart is set on the career path they are already pursuing, they can always use their tech skills to complement your chosen job!

7. It’s Easier to Show Than Tell

Having a website makes it easy for people to learn more about you and your talents. If your kid meets a networking connection, they can always direct them to the website to learn more about their accomplishments or about their life in general. Let their personality and accomplishments shine.

Steps to Take When Creating a Website

1. Choose a topic

This will require brainstorming because you will need to answer questions of what would your child website cover, what theme, the design, and layout etc. Don’t think for your child; help them to discover what they are passionate about or what interest the most that they would want to talk about of showcase on their website.

2. Find a web host

There are lots of free web host that you can use to build your kid’s website, but the downside of these type of website is the range of pop-up’s and banner ads you can’t get rid of. Paying for a web host service gives you more control over everything including the ads you want on the site and you could select your domain name too.

3. Learn web design

Do a little research about web design to understand basic HTML and graphics software, with this knowledge you will be very good at helping out your kid to design his or her website really nice. You could use a free template for your child’s site in the initial stage to kick-start the process.

4. Decorate the site

Your web design skills will come in handy at this point. You and your kid this together and have loads of fun snapping pictures and getting creative in a whole load of ways. If your kid has an artistic mind, he or she could draw or paint and use these on their site.

5. Safety rules

Websites are public domain and so it is very important that you keep your kid’s identity safe. You can password protect her site, which would require visitors to login in order to use the site. Set up basic internet rules that he or she is to follow relating to what to publish and also what time is to be given to the website. Finally, remember that it is a platform of expression so let your kid have fun doing so and if he or she loses interest in the website, there are many other options out there.

In conclusion, regardless of why you’re doing it, creating a personal website is one of the smartest things you can do for your kid. With all the available tools, I highly recommend looking into making a website. Even if it’s just a basic WordPress template and none of the fancy codings, it’s a learning experience that should be taken advantage of early.