Daddy, make me a…
posted in Frenzied Daddy, Hurray for Geekdom |Ms B, on her way home from school yesterday, informed me that she was writing a success guide to Zoo Tycoon 2. Naturally, smelling “free content,” I said “wow, that sounds great honey, can I put it up on the website?” There was a pause from the back seat, and then she asked “Daddy, can kids have websites?” I responded in the affirmative, deftly swinging the car out into traffic. Then the question I hadn’t quite been prepared for… “Daddy, can I have a website?”
Hmm, Can she have a website. Well, the obvious answer was “yes.” If I register a domain in my name, and she follows some clear, absolute rules about posting on the website, and blah blah blah, yeah she could have a website. That’s what I told her. And I told her she had to come up with the eight bucks to register the domain, and the domain name. So she starts listing possible domain names: she’s really animal-oriented, she’s a girl, she loves playing Zoo Tycoon 2. So, she thought “zoogirls dot com” would be good. ahem It’s, uh, taken. And it’s not pretty, not family-oriented, and very not safe for work. It’s certainly not good for a nine-year-old. So we talked about other options too, and I left for work with her doing her homework and considering domain names.
I would certainly rather see her on her own site rather than facebook or myspace. Ugh!
I was thinking about that for quite a while. At first, I was thinking she wanted some sort of basic website with a couple of pages and stuff. We discussed it, and it came out that she wanted to post stories and art; and things like her Zoo Tycoon Success Story. So I talked about a WordPress site, like this one. She thought that’d be fine, as long as she could make changes to it and upload “spinning 3d pictures of animals and stuff.”
When I came home from work, I told her that there was a way she could get a “free website.” She could use Wordpress.com, a hosted Wordpress blog system, and she could use the themes they provide. She wants more control over the themes, but we worked it out that she can try with this, and we’ll see how well she likes it. We had to set up a new email address to get it, but now she’s all set up for her WordPress blog. She hasn’t posted anything yet, so don’t go running over there to look for it.
I figure hopefully it’ll help with writing and stuff, and since I have the administrator password, I can watch over her shoulder.
