How to Make Your Own Website for Kids
Parents want their children to have safe, age-appropriate sites to visit when they surf the Internet. One way to ensure a safe haven for mouse-wielding youngsters is to create your own website for kids. By choosing kid-friendly designs and subject matter, and instituting simple website-building techniques, you can have your own site for kids up and running in a matter of hours.
How To Make Your Own Website for Kids
Select a host. Every website needs a host server to be published on the Web. Come up with a domain name, or URL (Uniform Resource Locator), for your site. Users can type in your URL to find the site. Select a site-hosting company and register your domain name. Unless you want third-party advertising all over your site, you will have to pay a monthly fee to the hosting company.
Design your website's look and feel. Experiment with bold, bright colors. Find images that go along with your theme. Use images from a free-image website or create your own by drawing, coloring and scanning in graphics or taking your own photographs. Find a dynamic font and use large type. For a children's site, avoid using small, uniform lettering and all-white backgrounds.
Create the site menu. Decide what subpages you want under your home page and give them simple names. Common themes for kids include, "About Us," "Games," and "Message Board." Other pages will depend on your theme. A science site for kids might include an "Experiments" page. A kids' dance site might include a "Steps" page.
Add content. Compose short, age-appropriate articles and instructions. To add text, click the "Insert" button and scroll down to "Textbox." Click to insert your article or instructions. Use the toolbox at the top of the page to adjust font, size and color. Insert pictures by clicking the "Insert" tab and scrolling to "Image." Resize accordingly. You may want to insert links to free-game sites as well.
Publish your site. When you have your site looking the way you want, click the "File" tab and scroll to "Publish Site." This could take a while as the information uploads onto the server. When it has finished uploading, you can type your address into the URL window and see your finished site.
- Have someone proofread your site before you publish it
- Change your content weekly or monthly to keep kids coming back