I’m doing a website for kids aged 5-9 that will be used by students and teachers.
The people I’m doing it for want the kids to have some input (discussing each other’s work, posting poems and pictures of their work), but because of the privacy laws, it needs to be quite anonymous.
I’m looking for a website forum or blog service or something along those lines that:
Lets the kids only be identified by their usernames for privacy.
Is free
Preferably doesn’t have ads. If it has ads, they need to be ads that 5 to 9- year-olds can see - no boobs!
Can be customized
Has the option of letting posts be reviewed before they go online.
Their site can handle PHP, but the thought wading through PHP makes me shudder a little.
Can anyone suggest a service?
Thank you! I appreciate your help!
I recommend Drupal, an open-source (free!) content-management system. If you want to code, you can customize it to death. And if you don’t want to code, you can use it out-of-the-box to set up a blog, message forums, collaborative stories, picture galleries, or whatever. You can add additional modules just by uploading them (and maybe setting up a database table or two), and modules can be activated/deactivated with a click of the mouse. Configuration is a tad confusing, just because things tend to be scattered over several sub-menus, but it’ll easily support user handles, previews, privacy, avatars, and whatever. If you plan to do more than just a message board in the future, it’s a good way to go IMO.
I recommend phpBB, which is free and open source as well. It requires PHP and a database, but is pretty easy to set up. There’s tons and tons of plugins for it as well, but its a fully functional and wonderful message board right out of the box.
I’ve installed it to test on my own website, and I’m excited about it! It looks like it’s very thorough and customizable, and I will recommend it when I talk to the teachers next. If they don’t use it, I will! I just don’t know for what yet.
Thanks to wasson and Shagnasty, too. The PHP in the name of the program you suggested scared me away, so I tried Drupal first. It turns out I’m happy with it!
Glad you enjoy it. It helps to do a little planning before you set up a site, such as what user roles you want to create and what each person can do, but once you get familiar with it you’ll find it to be very flexible.
I completely redid my web site with Drupal earlier this year, and recently put together an e-commerce store with it as well. It’s not a panacea for everything, but in my opinion it’s currently an undiscovered treasure that will get more exposure in the future.
