My 14 yr old wants a forum.
 

Thats right... "hey mom, can I have a site like your misfits site, one that I can have admins and stuff". LOL He wants a game site or something....

I told him I would let him have one, no harm right? I'm on a dedicated machine with plenty of space.

Then I got to thinking... whos REALLY gonna be watching all those teenagers? Especially with their cracks, hacks and mods.

Oh hell no! Not on my machine! LOL

Do any of you webmasters with teenagers let your kids have their own sites?:eek:

It good that your son wants to start using the internet for more then just Facebook.

I would start him off with something simple and FREE, such as phpBB. Have yourself as the Master (Super) Administrator and him as an Admin. Censor a few things to prevent him from linking to well known file sharing sites & from anyone uploading files also.

From time to time... Pop in and keep an eye on him.

I think its better that he came to you, then rather doing it behind your back. ;)

I started learning all the web stuff when I was like 13 or 14 ... i remember the 1st things I liked to do is create blogs at blogspot and add cool widgets and all that stuff, even tho there wasn't even 1 person visiting my blogs lol .. then i started to work more on the style part and coding so i decided to learn html so i learned all html on w3schools.com, very good website though.

I used to download a lot of cracked / hacked scrips etc.. including vbulletin on my 1st warez forum .. and eventually started to do paid jobs one a few websites ( because i learned how to use photoshop, code in xhtml + css & php + mysql / mssql ) so i started making money online and saving it on my paypal account ..

But of course now that I have enough resources I like to have all my programs licensed and to be all legal ^^ .. I have a gaming network with 3 different games and a few thousands of users .. oh an obviously i closed the warez forum ^^ ..

The good thing about starting to use the internet and scripts at that age is that you get to learn a lot .. I can mention myself as an example, im 18 now and i know how to design professional websites and code scripts not using any kind of program like dreamweaver etc..

i would say you should let him have his own gaming website, but of course control all that cracked / hacked stuff so he doesn't gets into that ^_^!

Let him do it. I started playing around with forums, websites and the internet in general when I was around 13/14 (hell, I'm only 18 now) and it was great fun and taught me alot of what I know today.

Start with a free forum script, and localhost so he can have a play around with things, then when he's comfortable with the scripts he plans to use, let him register a domain and cheap shared hosting account and start his site.

Chances are it will never go anywhere but it can be alot of fun and some good experience should he want to get into the webmaster business.

My 13 old kid manages his own forum in the area of his interest : Rubiks cube.
The forum is not active, but I am happy that he spends some of his time usefully. The forum is however not hosted from my dedicated server.

This is a video of him solving Rubiks cube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gg_K8ijWQ4

And this is his forum:
http://www.cubetalks.com/

I would suggest you to encourage your son also to have his forum.
If nothing, it will hone his social skills.

I homeschool him under a full time virtual program. He could probably get credit for it and social interaction is always a plus with homeschooling.

He is already very good at stuff like this... Hes used sandbox programs for years now. He says he wants to be a game developer when he gets older. Its a research project he has to do this semester "how to become a game developer". The saying goes that its easier to teach a child a new language, than an adult. So, I guess the same thing can be true for PHP and the like. LOL

Hey, nothing wrong with phpbb, its where I got my start! I remember coming to VB and thinking, OMG plug-ins? haha

You're the only one who knows for sure, Lisa, as to how mature and responsible he is. That is what you should base your decision on, not what others have to say about it. Just be ready to watch things as they develop to see what direction it all goes in. ;)

well this has something that came up lol my son is going to 10 years and he has a big passion
for trading Pokemon cards so he wanted a website that he could do his trading. but i have a vb licence so i a have been thinking of use it so there friends can get on to trade and have there conversations and they could start a club. but i will look after the site and admin but let him do the moderation , the only thought i have is what the other parents might think maybe it is to young but i have been hearing that there letting there children on facebook that i won't allow for my kids yet so at least with vb i would have some control and maybe let the parents join in to help moderate the site so we can say it is protected by parents. then maybe the kids won't come lol

he is turning 10 next month so this would this be a good present and when he gets older he can admin the whole site himself. but he might have to look at more then pokimon cards ;).

This is touchy for me... my 8 year old little girl already knows how Daddy is on a PC, I've already busted her when Disney's Pirates emails me chat logs about them using words Kess instead of Kiss and other so no matter what let's not think our own children are the picture perfect image of childhood innocence because if we do then we're failing as parents imo. I would not do this, I would throw up a static html or php site with some videos and images or a slide-show and nothing more... why? Well if you introduce them to something more interactive you also open up the risk. Online predators come across a site they learn is ran by a 10 year old what do you think they're going to do pass it up saying "nah the mother/father will get us for sure" no that's not a concern in their eyes. On top of that a forum has the possibility to be hacked, dependent upon the method used your son or daughter's pc could become infected with something and then in turn you could be at risk - basically for me and I'm not bashing anyone for wanting to give their kids more however for me it's a HUGE NO.

Wow, your a bit of a doom and gloom merchant.

@Uncoder - I say think yourself lucky a forum is all they want. Go for it.

I agree but it is still a good idea to keep a close eye on things until they get further along, anyway. Too many undesirables out there that can and will take advantage of someone if given the opportunity. It's a good learning experience, anyway. Better to learn it now while someone is there to watch over things, than to learn it later the hard way.

well you could hand out member ship cards or referrals at the beginning to get the right kind of crowed, i think for my son it is more for there friends then it gives them a chance to get educated and just a place for them to have fun and to set up meets to do some swapping cards and post some photos up ,so it will be a closed forum. but as time goes by the word spreads around then more kids may want to joing. no rush over here but the last super man has some good points :up:

Opening up possibilities can really help a kid do things you nor they would ever imagine. When I was 12 I wanted a gaming computer but rather than get that my dad told me I could have more money if I built my own. So wanting an even better computer I built my own with no instructions other than the manuals the parts came with. As a result of that I became very confident with computers and learned more. Within 5 years I was the owner of some online gaming servers that I still run to this day. In all that time I may have spent tens of thousands of dollars on computer equipment but I have also made tens of thousands. Now I am just finishing my ba in management already having a few years of expired behind me from managing a gaming community for years. I personally hope to keep the community going for the rest of my life and one day hand it down to my kids. ;)

well.. i would do it.. my nephew is 6 years old and im on pc and sites all the time.. so he wants one ... hes even started "recording" Videos of himself just like that show "icarley" or whatever it is...

haha.. go for it

Why not? Just set the ground rules and check on it. ;)

At lease he's going something constructive....

Quite frequently actually :p.

Edit: One thing I will say is this, teach them first thing how to backup the site unless your host has that included in the service. If they come to you with a hacked site, a lost this or that you won't want to handle those tears so to avoid that be sure to train them right off the bat how to perform backups.. the rest is trial and error, with a backup you can restore... it's like Johnson & Johnson's No More Tears Shampoo for my little one :D.

are you trying to reach out to let us know that you had many teers dealing with backups, come over here you big lug ill give you a big hug.:D

Hate to say this, but just hope you realize your kid will never become the next "Bill Gates" or "Mark Zuckerberg". Why? Because you're limiting them. I was 2 years old when I actually "started typing" and literally was fairly fluent with a keyboard by age 5. I'm 18 now, and my parents never held me back or limited anything for me. I also happen to run well over 100 sites, several of which get 10m+ page-views, and roughly 1m+ visitors a month. So setting limitations might keep kids "safe" sure... But you could also potentially be destroying their chance at really becoming something great.

I'm not trying to insult you or anything at all, because by all means it's your kid so you get to choose how they are raised. Simply making stating an opinion that's all.


@OP: 100% yes let them, and if it doesn't cost too much money support them by any means necessary. I would also go out and buy them a book about how to program in C++ or C#. The future is in the internet, might as well prepare your kids for it. :)

Ohh no offense taken, I realize that others just like myself base their responses on the information they have at the time and truthfully I more than likely should have mentioned McKinley makes all straight A's and knows how to navigate the web more fluently than most and can even understand some basic html and how css works i.e. top to bottom I'm just not the type to go bragging all the time and especially not when America's education is not top of the line (Google the "Waiting for Superman" Movie). More to her than all that as well but again, I felt there was no sense coming in here early blabbering about all that until someone forgets there's more to a book then it's cover and you shouldn't judge or so the saying goes :cool: but aren't we all based solely on the OP's tidbit of information? Gosh we are all contradictions to ourselves without realizing if you think about it lol.

I'm very strict is all and read my savvy humor here and laugh with me... the title was about the OP's son wanting a forum @ age 14 not my daughter becoming the next Mark Zuckerburg or Bill Gates - with her parents help and my teaching her programming and different languages she'll be the next McKinley Miller!

Now that's how you should think as a parent imo :cool:.

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Before learning the hard way yes and sad to see others all the time speaking about a lost site due to no backup!

I'll gladly take that HUG :D and thanks!

I would let it happen. Rather it happen under your supervision just make sure you are an admin also. Also backup is a good idea like superman said.

also the last superman should be lex luthor .... sorry had to take the jab .

Also remember you ultimately have the kill switch. But hey i am the type that have monitoring software on all my daughter laptop so i know what is going on. Yes I am big brother.

I started a forum when I was 16...now it's my main source of income...and to all my fun :)

Sure why not? Sounds like a great idea.

Better he has his own forum than wasting time [or worse] elsewhere on the internet...

But I would sit him down and talk things through.. Make him prepare a "community plan"...

I run a gaming site so he could always end up with a mod spot or helping with gaming news postings.

I was 14 years old when I started making own websites. The very 1st website was handling a forums (yahoo forums) with about 700 members and more than some thousands of posts. But then it was closed by forumotion.com on abuse reports.

Now, I am over 18 and have more than 10 websites running with some large networks. I can do basic html codding and some other stuff. I would say, let him do it.

Good Luck

same here as wajden, my hobby site hit 11,500 members.

exposing him to the world can backfire though, for me, it gave me dreams of leaving my country to a place where my skill is more appreciated.
however, it may turn him into a couch vegetable. lol

I was taught how to drive at age 8, I worked on my first car with my father and since we lived in a rural area, I was able to drive around at age 11. One time while I was driving to a small town, I saw a computer and fell in love with it. Got my first PC at age 12, learnt lots of stuff and later we moved to this other town, with the help of my father, we opened a small Computer Repair center, I was 14 by then.

I was browsing the web one day and found this site where they had background music and animated gifs, I loved it. That site got me into this other side of the web. It was a blog, under the blogspot.com domain. I created an account and the first thing I did was add the animated gifs and bg music to it xD I must admit it was difficult, I didn't know anything about html :P. Now I do, lucky me xD

I've been very sick lately and now that I'm feeling a bit better, I have decided to learn how to play the guitar.
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As to letting your child have his own website, let him. If he truly wants his own site and you don't let him, he will on your back(I'm guessing you wouldn't like that). Depending on how you have raised him, he should be mature enough by this age, so support him.

Greetings from a xx y/o guy.

Thanks for the advise, everyone! I've decided to let him have one with me as the superadmin and him on a different admin usergroup, as admin. :)

I hope you feel better Xtrigit!

i think this reason should be enough for me to quit having a forum , so this is a child business

Yup, that is how our site biggest site got started. BUT, there are so many ins and out and legal issues when you deal with kids under 18. I didn't mean for it to become a business but it did. He was 11 when he said "mom I want a forum". If I had known then how many hours and years of work that would have meant I don't know know what I would have said. Especially now as we are in the process of upgrading EVERYTHING and money is tight

Let him have a forum. I started my own forum when I was 12 Without any parental consent and I turned out just fine. :D

I believe that it is good to have an avenue for kids that age to share their ideas about anything. I would not give them the all-mighty power to be the administrator of such, as they are not that mature enough to make good and sound judgements. That is why we leave that task to someone who is mature enough not to purge someone's account because he bad mouthed him, not that it isn't happening.

I have 14 years and I have a vbulletin forum, is not complicated ...

Your powers of super-administration will be usurped, OP! Mark my words!

I say do it but tightly control what they do and what settings the forum has. As to the many post on this thread going on and on about I have this site and so many people going to it (one guy said a million a month), basically bragging on and on yet you have not one link one your sig to prove said site. Not to say some of you might actually have a site that does as well as you say but at least post a link.

Well here is a thought that maybe I can share, I am in the same boat where my kids want there own site also but there younger and there friends rang from age but I will administrate the site for now till he is much older. I want to set up the program so parents are the moderators.

Here is one thought, one of my old friends that ran his own forum for school said that what made it successful is he gave every member the had x so many post had the power to bann a member but not to delete and he said that all the crap came to a halt and they had a good clean forum for years. They all moved onto university and the forum died but it was popular while they where attending high school. Takes pressure off the admin from being bullied, hey I did not bann you lol

I started doing sites at 14 or 15 not entirely sure but I had fun. The content of sites I was running and getting into on the other hand was far from legal and I will never go back to that so just watch him. Make sure your son or daughter doesn't do bad things and knows the trouble they could get in before doing anything else. Just my opinion.

Lol funny brings back some memories, one of my good friends ran a bbs from home back in 1981 and we had connections in new York LA and we where doing a lot of trading and had one of the largest apple software collection around Quebec, but we did not sell only did it ias a hobby and did we get in trouble with the law,,yeah we went a bit to far so when I turned 18 we shut down operation, got off easy with the parents , my father was a scientist and built his own computers as a hobby and I think there was some pride in him, in a heavy German accent,” If he is going to get in trouble ,dahh it is vmuch better with computers”

But I look back man was it fun and full of adventures and we had to take the bus to meet people that took us all over the place, really cool for a kid, well you could do that back then not like these days, and the parents weren’t really worried, just keep a quarter in your pockedt and make a phone call and we will come and get you.” Don’t worry mom and dad I don’t need money for the phone I can crack it “lol