This blog was intended to be, primarily, my professional showcase. A place where I could display examples of freelance work that I do and also explore some new ideas as they arose. Last week, though, I suddenly found myself extremely interested and excited about something totally unrelated to customizing WordPress installations or creating Microsoft Office templates. My son started blogging. This started me on a quest to see what others had to say about the idea of kids under 13 years of age having their own blogs. While I have heard from a handful of parents with young bloggers, my searchesm so far, have come up a little on the weak side. There are a few blog posts here and there. Many of them were written 3-4 years ago. The blogosphere has changed and grown in that time. Clearly this is an area that is not as saturated with blog content as some of the other subject areas that I’m interested in. Instead of being yet another blog reporting on every little move WordPress makes I could really have something valuable to contribute that isn’t being hammered to death.
So, I have a new plan. I want to write about kids and blogging. I think that this subject has enough potential that it should have it’s own space. I want to create a site rich, community focused, site with resources for parents that either already have a young blogger or are interested in learning about the benefits and challenges of having a child blogger. This site will, hopefully, feature lots of guest writers, and be packed full of tips and suggestions on all types of issues related to kids publishing their work in a public format. This site, initially, will be focused on the parents. I’d love to have things to offer the kids directly and I think the site could easily develop into a resource for both kids and parents. Parent involvement, however, is really what I want to emphasize in the beginning.
Look for some announcements and possibly a poll or two related to the creation of a new site dedicated to kids and blogging. I have a domain name in mind and I am planning to contact a designer to help with the theming of the new site. My instinct is to throw something together tonight and have it live by morning. I’m going to try, however, to slow down and give things a bit more thought and planning. I’m very open to feedback and would welcome any comments or suggestions on this subject.
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