WordPress For 8 Year Olds

Blogging really isn’t hard. My 8 year old daughter is on the other computer as I write, typing her first WordPress page up. Favourite colour, age, etc. To be fair I set up the installaton for her, but now she’s pretty much on her own.

I have to say it’s not with a little intrepidation  that I am letting her loose on the Interweb. It’s far too unregulated, she’s going to post things she’s going to regret, and quite frankly an 8 year old going anywhere near my web server makes me keen not to show her how to install plug-ins for a fair few years. But in the end – what am I going to do? When both my kids were born, I bought the .co.uk versions of their names, with the intention of somehow giving them the domains as presents when they were old enough. At the time I thought “old enough” would be 14-16 or so. But kids today need different skills to the ones their parents needed. They need to start young and I can’t teach things that haven’t been invented yet. So I guess all I can do is show her how WordPress and a website gives you the tools to talk to the world.

She’s been asking for me to have a web page for ages now. What scares me is just how quickly she has stopped asking questions and just started using it.

I don’t think I’ll add her site to my blogroll JUST yet though.

(Added…) I guess that to make this post useful, I should give a few ideas on how to protect an 8 year old blogger. I’d appreciate any other ideas. So far:

1. The family computer is in a family room. Keeping an eye out is easier if she’s not locked away in a bedroom.
2. I did not give her admin access – just set her up as an editor for now.
3. No FTP access!