I have had so much fun coaching FLL! If you are thinking about doing it, I can’t emphasize enough what a valuable experience this is for children. Since I’ve also been doing my students teaching in a high school physics classrom while coaching robotics, I’ve seen the problems with expecting students to follow an assigned curricula. There is no motivation. In the FLL classroom, students can’t help but learn. The challenges are fun and the kids are motivated to solve them through trial and error. Especially if you have kids that want to go into STEM fields later in life, I highly recommend FLL. We are so lucky that FIRST exists!

Here are some key lessons I learned during my inaugural season. I hope some of them are helpful to you.

1. Clean your wheels!

If the mission you are trying to solve relies on your robot traveling a precise distance, you want your wheels to grip the mat the same way every time. Slipping is death! We missed what would have been our top score at one of our tournaments by a mere millimeter and the grime on our wheels was 100% to blame for this. As soon as I cleaned it up with a hand sanitizing wipe it started behaving the way it had in practice.

2. Make sure kids know how to pass the robot. 

In the loud, anxiety-producing environment of a tournament, accidents will happen. During our practice round at the competition, one child hurriedly tried passing the robot to another child who wasn’t ready. The robot fell and broke into 4 or 5 pieces just seconds before they were about to go on. (Thankfully we had a backup!) I think I will be telling this story for years to come to make sure kids know how important it is to make sure the person that is receiving the handoff is ready!

3. Speaking of anxiety, try playing an applause/cheering YouTube track in the background when the kids practice.

There’s nothing like being at a real competition, but this can help them be a little more prepared for the intensity that they will feel when they are at the real thing! 

4. If at all possible, have a backup robot!

See #2. 

5. Also, have a USB key with all of your programs backed up.

You never know what will happen! See #6.

6. Do not, I repeat DO NOT, switch computers between practice and the tournament.

I tried to make a minor change to one of the programs at a tournament only to have the Spike Prime update and delete ALL the programs on the robot. Thankfully, I had the programs backed up and could quickly add them back onto the robot. (Thank you, #5!) However, the maximum speed of the robot was slightly different after the update and all of our codes were a little off. I eventually figured out that connecting the robot to computer with a newer version of the Spike Prime app caused the update. It’s hard to know exactly what version of the app each individual computer is using, so in the future, I will never switch mid tournament!

7. Set your speed and acceleration in each of your programs.

Even though I honestly believe the update affected our robot’s maximum speed in a way I don’t yet know how to control, it is still a good idea to slightly lower your robot’s maximum speed and acceleration for precision movements! These changes will slow the robot down but also make its behavior more repeatable. If you are just returning to home base or need to slam into a wall, go ahead and increase the speed back up to save those few precious seconds!

8. Speaking of precision, you need to be using the gyro for precision missions!

It is frustrating for the kids when the robot seems to behave differently each time you run it. Our teams had an advantage in that both my co-coach and I have a lot of experience programming. We knew how to make use of the gyro sensor. I’m planning to add some tutorials to the blog soon so you can avoid some of those frustrations as well! Stay tuned!

9. Think outside the box.

Watching how other teams completed missions at the tournaments gave us ideas for extra ways to earn points. We were able to implement some of these changes between qualifiers and regionals. Remember that you don’t need to solve the missions the way the designer intended. All that matters is the configutation of the table when the time runs out. At our very first meeting of the season, the veteran coach I was working with had the kids brainstorming different ideas for how they could solve each mission. This is SUCH a valuable practice! We will definitely spend more time strategizing out-of-the-box strategies earlier in future seasons.

10. Remember the robot game itself is only a small piece of FLL.

I’ll be honest, the robot game is all I really cared about. It’s the part that seems the most fun to me, so it is definitely where we put our focus throughout our team meetings. However, once you get to the tournament, the Innovation Project, the robot design presentation, and the way the team demonstrates their core values have equal weight. Even though one or our teams got a trophy for coming in 3rd in the robot games, they did not advance to the Championships. I still need to learn more about how those decisions are made, but in the future, we will put a little more thought and effort into the 3 judging categories as well! Our innovation project actually turned out amazing and is leading to us starting a chess club in our small town, but this didn’t come about into AFTER the tournaments, because we put it off to focus on the game.

I hope some of these FLL coaching tips were helpful to you in your FIRST LEGO League journey! Feel free to reach out if you have questions!

Related Links

Robotics Activities for Kids
Science Activities for Kids
All Learning Activities

The post 10 Lessons Learned My First Year as an FLL Coach appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

The reason why I myself am learning how to use a Spike Prime is because I would like to try coaching a FIRST LEGO League Challenge team for 4th to 8th graders. Literally anyone can do this regardless of your educational or professional background. This program seems like it will be such a fun and valuable experience for the kids. I am hoping to have a team of 8 to 10 kids (including my 3 kids that are currenty in that age range).

However, whether or not you want to officially compete at a FIRST LEGO League tournament, one of these kits is a great way for kids to have fun learning robotics, engineering, and especially programming. I worked as a computer programmer for the Air Force for over a decade and didn’t start learning computer science until I was 18 and in college. An experience like this would have given me such an incredible headstart.

If kids are already familiar with MIT’s free programming language, Scratch, they will find the transition to programming LEGO robots seamless. My kids all learned Scratch using Code Your Own Games! by Max Wainewright. I highly recommend this book for those just getting started with Scratch. Here is my full review.

When I started making this Spike Prime series, after I installed the app and learned how to connect to Bluetooth and transfer files, I was actually planning to move next to building a robot that we could program. However, I quickly realized that learning how to manage files was going to be an important step that didn’t come naturally for my kids. They tend to not remember to even name their programs. However, as a computer scientist, I can attest to the importance of implementing some sort of naming and organization strategy. I’m hoping this post will help with that!

For your convenicene, here is the entire LEGO Spike Prime Tutorial Sequence. I am hoping I will remember to come back and update this as we go!

• Tutorial 1: The Unboxing
• Tutorial 2: Testing the Motors and Sensors
• Tutorial 3: Installing the App and Connecting the Hub
• Tutorial 4: Writing and Managing Programs
• Tutorial 5: Building the First Robot Car

Writing and Managing Spike Prime Programs

Recommended Age Range: Elementary, Middle School, High School
Time Required: About 20 – 30 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: The LEGO Education Spike Prime Set costs $400 on the LEGO site. As of this writing, it is more expensive on Amazon, but I would check!

Instructions

1. The first step anytime you would like to write a program is to launch the Spike app. I am a Windows user, so I’m not sure how these instructions will differ on a Mac, but I have a shortcut to the app on my desktop. I could also search “Spike” from my list of applications.
   
2. Once you launch the app, you should see the screen below. Select Spike Prime. You will also have to confirm that you have everything you need (namely, the Spike Prime set).
   
3. To write a new program, click the “New Project” button in the middle of the screen. Notice that to the right of this button, it is showing all of the recently created projects. We will clean these up in a bit.
4. Next it will ask you what type of program you would like to create. I LOVE that they have multiple options. The icon blocks are supposed to be good for kids who don’t even know how to read. Since my 4th through 8th graders can read, I am planning to start them off on Word Blocks. They will feel right at home if they have any familiarity with Scratch. I am so happy that it has a Python option as well. My 8th grader has started to learn Python and it is a language that I used regularly in my job as a computer scientist.
   
   To start, click “Word Blocks.” You can always try the simpler icon version or more advanced Python version later. Note that in faded letters you can see that the program will be named Project 1. You could name the project something more applicable here, but I am going to skip it so that I can show you how to rename the file later if you forget. (Which, I promise, my own kids will.)
   
5. In order to be able to test our program, we will need to have the Hub connected. You can always do this using a cable, but the cable isn’t necessary as long as your computer has Bluetooth.
   
   Before you connect the Hub, press the power button on the Hub and then the Bluetooth button in the upper right. Also, be sure that Bluetooth is enabled on your computer or tablet.
   
   Then, click the yellow button with the Hub icon inside to open the Hub connection.
   
6. The app will then ask you what color your Hub’s power light is. We just updated our Hub recently, so our Hub is green, but if at any point it needed an update, we would select the white button to receive the update.
   
7. Assuming you have already enabled Bluetooth on your device, turned on your Hub, and pressed the Bluetooth button, it should find your Hub and show it listed on the right side of your screen. Ours is named Stuart. Press the Connect button.
   
   It should tell you your Hub was successfully connected.
   
8. If you did NOT name your program in Step 4, this would be a good time to make sure your program’s name is something that will remind you of the purpose of the program. To rename the program, click the 3 vertical dots in the upper left of the screen next to the project name, then select “Rename Project.” For us, the default name was Project 1.
   
9. I will call this program “Hello World” since my goal is to create a program that will display the message “Hello World” on the Hub. This is cusomarily the “first program” in every computer science class I’ve ever taken where we are learning a new language.
   
   After you have typed in your program’s name, click “Save.”
   
10. Next, I will click on the Light menu on the left hand side of the screen.
    
11. Since I want to write a message, I will drag the “Write” block over into my program space and connect it to the block labled, “when program starts.” Then I will change the message inside to whatever I want it to say. In my case, this is “Hello World.”
    
12. Our first program is complete! Now we just need to transfer it onto our Hub so that we can run it. A simple way to do this would just be to push the yellow triangular “play” button on the bottom right of the screen. This will transfer it over to the Hub into the slot number selected and run the code.
    
    However, suppose we already had a program we wanted to keep in slot 0. We can change the program number by pushing the arrow to the right of the number.
    
13. From here, we can push the arrows next to the icon of the hub to select the slot number we want. I decided to go with 7.
    
14. Now when we select the yellow button, it will send the program to slot 7 and run the program. Using this yellow triangle button is probably what we want to do most of the time. However, if for some reason you didn’t want to run the program at this time, just transfer the program to run later, you can click the download button in the bottom right of the Download to Hub screen.
    
15. At this point, you have the option of running the program either by hitting the yellow button or by pressing the left and right arrows on the Hub itself to select program 7, then hitting the center button to run it. When you run the program, you should see the message “Hello World” scrolling across the screen. I would recommend playing around with both methods. Particularly if you plan to compete, the kids will have to run the programs directly from the Hub and not from the computer during a competition.
    
16. One nice thing about the Spike Prime app is that your files will save automatically. When you are done, you can just close the window. However, I want to show you how to manage your files from within the app. Suppose you wanted to find this program months later. Assuming you are still within the file, click the house icon in the upper left to go back to the Home page.
    
17. From the Home page, click My Projects in the left hand menu.
    
18. From here, you will see all your programs listed. I am going to go ahead and delete all the ones I don’t want. I hadn’t realized that each time I worked on one of the tutorials, it was creating a file. Since I can go back and redo these tutorials at any time, I am going to select them all and delete them.
    
19. Now your projects list should look nice and clean! I recommend doing some housecleaning reguarly to name your files and remove programs you don’t want.
    

Tips & Tricks

The tutorial above describes how to write and manage programs using the Spike Prime software. However, I want to also mention the shortcomings that I see with the software at present and workarounds. Some of these work arounds are based on advice from the LEGO Education help desk.

• First, there does not seem to be a way to have folders within this My Projects page. Since I have many kids and plan to have even more students writing programs for my robots once I start my team, it would be great to organize the programs by the author. To work around this lack of folder structures, I am planning to just have my kids start each program with their initials so we know whose is whose.
  
• Second, it seems that there used to be a way to see a list of what programs were on the Hub from within the software. However, LEGO customer support told me that they lost this functionality with a firmware update and are working on a way to add it back. In the meantime, they suggested having the program write the name of the project like we did above for “Hello World” at the start of each program. This is mildly annoying, but also a good idea while we wait for the update.
  
• Third, I asked if there was a way to delete programs from slots so that we would know which slots did not have programs in them. This would be helpful so that someone doesn’t accidently write over someone else’s program that they wanted to keep on the Hub. (Theoretically, overwriting programs is not a big concern, since all the programs are automatically saved within the app. If we’re doing a good job, the naming system should make the one we want easy to find and transfer to the hub again if needed.) Here is LEGO’s advice:
  
  
  Again, not a bad idea, but also mildly annoying. I hope they update the firmware soon! Also, despite the grammar issues, I have found the LEGO customer support team to be extremely helpful and responsive, which is always encouraging.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions! I hope this tutorial was helpful.

Related Links

Science Activities for Kids
Robotics Activities for Kids
All Learning Activities

The post Spike Prime Tutorials: Writing and Managing Programs appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

Choosing a theme is probably the most fun part of starting a blog, in my opinion. There are SO many to choose from! If you do not want to spend money on your theme, you can always choose a free one. This is what I did for my first year of blogging. The downside is that it will likely not be as flexible, fast, or mobile-friendly. After my blog started making a little bit of money, I upgraded to a Premium WordPress theme. However, now that I know I am likely going to need to update someday anyway, it may be worth your time and energy to invest upfront. This avoids having to reconfigure your site at some point in the future.

Choosing a WordPress Theme

While I recommend choosing a premium theme, I will explain here how to go about choosing either a free theme or premium theme.

Choosing a Free WordPress Theme

If you know that your blog is just a hobby to document your thoughts, idea, pictures, etc, and that you will never care about traffic or earning money from your blog, then a free theme is definitely the way to go. One of the best ways to find one is just to go to the Theme menu in your dashboard under Appearance and then click Add New.

From here you will be presented with lots of options. If I click the tab at the top that lets me search the “Popular” themes, I see that there are over 3,000 to choose from.

Once you have selected a Theme, it will make changes to your site automatically to adjust its appearance. To customize it even further, you will want to go to the creator’s website to search for documentation on the particular theme you have chosen.

Choosing a Premium WordPress Theme

If you decide to go with a Premium theme, you will want to purchase this theme from a reputable buyer. I once had a bad experience purchasing a Premium theme for a friend that we found randomly off Google or Pinterest. I can’t remember. In any rate, we had to cancel the purchase. From now on, I know I will only buy a Premium theme from a site I trust.

Here are some reputable sites you can purchase Premium themes from:

• Studiopress (affiliate link, this is where I purchased mine from)
• Elegant Themes (creator of the popular theme, Divi)
• Restored 316 Designs (very feminine themes)
• Themeforest (this is a very popular place for finding themes)

It can be intimidating selecting a theme when there are so many to choose from! It is especially daunting when you consider that you are making such a big investment. Premium themes typically run anywhere from $50 to $150. As I am looking at these sites now, I see that some places are pushing you to purchase a membership or a plugin with an annual fee rather than just purchasing a theme. This gives you the flexibility to try out multiple themes, but it also means that you are now paying a yearly, rather than a one-time fee. Personally, I would rather stick with the one-time fee.

The Foodie Pro Theme

I have chosen to go with the Food Pro Theme for both my blog and now my daughter’s blog, since I already know how to use it. It is a common theme that provides a lot of customization options and is mobile-friendly. It does not need to be used for a cooking blog, as Research Parent is not a cooking blog. However, since my daughter wants to start a cooking blog, it is an obvious choice.

Purchasing the Theme

Foodie Pro was designed by Feast Design Co. and is sold at the StudioPress site (affiliate link). Because this theme relies on the Genesis Framework, to use this theme, you need to purchase two separate components:

• The Foodie Pro theme
• The Genesis Framework

Note that at the moment, it is cheaper to purchase these two components separately than together, because they are currently on sale. However, you may also want to check this page, which has the two items bundled together as a set.

Downloading the Theme

Once you purchase the theme, you will likely be sent links to download your purchase. However, note that at anytime in the future, you can always log back into your StudioPress account and re-download the updated files. This is a lovely feature that your purchase includes all future versions of the theme as well. Even though I purchased the theme several years ago, every year or two I log back in and download the must up-to-date version to get the latest updates.

Click here to log in to Studiopress. From here you will be able to download the themes you have purchased by clicking on the blue download buttons next to your purchases.

Make sure you know where these files are saved on your computer. My browser automatically saves them to my Downloads folder, so I am going to move them to a folder I have specifically created on my laptop for blog-related files.

Installing the Theme

In order to install the theme, I am going to be following the instructions found on this page.

Installing Genesis Framework

The first step is to install, but not activate the parent theme, which is the Genesis Framework. I feel the instructions the above site provides on how to do this are pretty clear.

From the left hand menu of my WordPress Dashboard, I am going to click on Appearance, and then themes. From there, I can click the Add New button as I did when I was looking for a free theme.

From here I can select Upload Theme.

From here you will click Choose File, then select the file genesis.###.zip. The ### will be replaced with whatever the current version number of the Genesis Framework. Be sure that you select the genesis file and the genesis-sample file. Once you have selected the correct file from your computer, click Install Now. Once it is installed, DO NOT ACTIVATE this theme.

Once you have successfully installed the theme, you should see a screen something like this. Again, do not hit activate!

Installing Foodie Pro

Installing your child theme, Foodie Pro, will look very similar to the procedure we followed above for Genesis. The only difference is that this time when you choose a file, you will select foodiepro-###.zip where ### is the version number and name. Mine is “v440 – Coffee and Canada.” Also, once this one is successfully installed, you will click Activate!

You can check out your site and see that it already looks different, but you will want to customize it.

Customizing Foodie Pro

Once Foodie Pro is installed, you can follow the designer’s tutorials here: https://feastdesignco.com/how-to/foodie-pro-tutorials/ to customize your theme.

Install Necessary Plugins

Before you install the demo content, you will need to import and activate the following plugins.

• Widget Importer and Exporter
• Genesis eNews Extended
• Simple Social Icons
• Yoast SEO Plugin (which I already have installed)
• Regenerate Thumbnails Advanced
• ShortPixel image optimizer (this one will require you to request an API key to use it)
  

This can be done by going to the Plugins section of the left hand dashboard menu. Then click Add New and search for the plugin. Click Install Now, then Activate.

Importing Demo Content

Many themes come with some demo content that you can install if you are starting from scratch so you can see how your site will look once you add real content.

You do not need to install the demo content. Many of the pages, posts, and categories that are created during this import, you may want to delete at some point. You can skip this step and just start creating content. However, if you do not have content and you want to get a sense of how your site will look as you add content, this will give you an idea of how the website will look.

To install it you will want to go to the folder where you downloaded the zip file for Foodie Pro. At the time of this writing, the file was called, foodiepro-v440 – Coffee Canada.zip. You want to unzip this file. To do this on a PC, you can right click and select Extract All…

Once the folder is unzipped, inside you will find a file called foodiepro.xml in the foodiepro-v440/sample-data folder. In order to install this demo content, you will first need to install the WordPress Importer. This can be found in under the Tools menu on the left hand side of the dashboard, under the Import section. Click Install Now under where it says WordPress.

The words will change to Run Importer. Click Run Importer. Then click Choose File.

Locate the file called foodiepro.xml from the folder you unzipped earlier. Then select Upload file and import.

You may want to reassign the author of the imported content. I selected the already existing user, admin. I also checked the box to download and import file attachments. Then click Submit.

Note that a lot of the pages, posts, categories that are created you may want to delete at some point, but for now, it will give you an idea of how a website with content could look.

Installing the Widgets

Another handy feature, if you want to see how your website could look, is to use the widget importer to automatically set up some widgets. Widgets are just a way to customize the way your site looks in terms of the header, footer, sidebar, and homepage. The option that I prefer is to choose the exact ones I want and customize these on my own. However, for my daughter’s site, I am going to use the importer to see what the Foodie Pro designer, Shay Bocks, recommends.

To do this, I will go to the Tools menu on the left hand side and select Widget Importer and Exporter. From there, select copy and paste, then copy in the contents of the foodieprowidgets.wie file from the same sample-data folder in the foodiepro zip file you extracted earlier. (Note: I tried importing the file directly and it didn’t work, but I had more luck when I copy and pasted the contents after opening the file in Wordpad.)

Once the widgets are imported it will show a list of all the changes that were made.

I happened to notice that importing the demo content and widgets changed my permalink structure back to including the date. To change this back to postname, go to Settings in the left hand dashboard menu and select Permalinks.

Import Header Logo

To install a new header logo, go to Appearance in the left hand side of the dashboard, then select Customize.

Since the file that the theme was previously using had a width of 640 pixels, I made a logo that had a width of 640 pixels as well.

Additional Customization

At this point, you have a website with demo content that looks like a real website. You can now customize it to your heart’s content. Here are some of the changes I recommend looking into.

Customize Widgets

In the Appearance menu on the left hand side there is an option called Widgets.

Before Header

In the Before Header section, the theme places the Genesis eNews Extended widget to collect subscriber email addresses. This is a great idea if you plan to try monetizing your blog one day, but you will need to sign up with a service to collect these addresses. Otherwise, they will not be stored anywhere. One service you can use is MailChimp.com. Mail Chimp is free for up to 2,000 contacts, which is great if you are just getting started.

Here is an article that explains how, once you have signed up for a MailChimp account, you can connect it with Genesis eNews Extended. I will be following this tutorial to update the widget that was preconfigured in my Before Header section, so that it collects email addresses. I am not going to provide a step by step tutorial here as I feel that link is very clear. I was surprised by how quick and easy this process was. It took less than 5 minutes and mainly involved copying and pasting a URL from MailChimp into the Action box of the Genesis eNews Extended widget.

Primary Sidebar

Here are some changes I made to my Primary Sidebar. I’m sure this will change over time, but this is how I customized it to begin with

• Deleted Recent Posts widget
• Deleted Recent Comments widget
• Deleted the text box that was a Foodie Pro Ad
• Modified the Genesis User Profile so that it had different text and pointed to a different page. I also plan to create a new user with the website’s email address and go to gravatar.com to create a different picture for that email address. I also moved this widget above the Recent Posts widget.
• Deleted the text box called Features
• Added a Genesis eNews Extended subscribe box and configured the same as the one in the Before Header section
• Added a Simple Social Icons box and added in all the appropriate URLs to my social media accounts.

Navigation Menu

The Navigation Menu comes prefilled with a Simple Social Icons widget. All you need to do in this widget is fill in the correct URLs for the social media links you want to include.

Footer Menus

Due to a widget that didn’t import properly due to it no longer being supported, I recommend dragging a blank text box into Footer 1. This will allow the other footer widgets to show up, which you can customize as you desire.

In Footer 2, I changed the “About the Designer” to “Let’s Connect” and then updated all the links in the Simple Social Icons widget as I did in the Navigation Menu. I also updated the Genesis User Profile as I did in the sidebar.

I deleted the text box in Footer 4, since it was just an add for the theme.

Later I decided I wanted to add a Genesis eNews Extended subscribe box to my footer as well, so I moved the Foodie Pro Featured posts to Footer 1 and changed it to be a one sixth grid with 6 posts showing. Then I added a Genesis eNews Extended widget to Footer 3 and customized as above.

Customize Menus

To customize your menus, you will click on Appearance on the left hand side of the dashboard, then Menus.

One of the changes I know I want to make right off the bat is that I want to go back in my Settings on the left hand side and set my homepage to static in the Reading section.

I do not think it matters what page is used as the Homepage, since Foodie Pro uses widgets to define the Homepage. However, the Posts Page is a page with a URL that will show all the latest posts. This might be a good thing to link to on the primary navigation menu. If you want to customize the way this “Posts Page” appears, you can change it in the Customize menu under Appearance. Select Theme Settings, then Content Archives. From here you can choose how many columns to use on this page as well as whether or not to show the title, features image, etc.

Another change that I made is that I switched to the secondary menu that was set as the Secondary Navigation Menu and I unchecked the box that set it as the Secondary Navigation Menu. This got rid of the social media menu bar at the top which I felt was unnecessary and added clutter.

“Starting a Blog” Series

This post will be part of a multi-part series! I will add links as I write and post these articles.

• Part 1: How to Start a Blog for a Kid
• Part 2: Setting Up HostGator Email
• Part 3: I’ve Set Up My Blog! Now What?
• Part 4: Customizing a Premium WordPress Theme (this post)
• Part 5: Monetizing Your Blog

The post Customizing a Premium Theme appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

Setup Social Media Accounts

Social media accounts would mainly be used for promotion, which you may not be ready to do at this point, especially if your blog is for a child. However, if promoting your blog is an avenue you think will be pursued at some point, it is better to claim them now rather than later, just in case someone else tries to claim them first.

Facebook

To setup a Facebook page you will need to be logged into your personal account. Once logged in, you can go here to Create a New Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/creation/. You will need to fill out the page name, as well as the Category and a brief description.

Once you create the page, you will be able to add a profile photo and a cover photo. For now I just used an image on my computer for the profile photo and a stock photo from Pixabay.com for the cover photo. I will be able to update these later.

Once your page is created and saved you will want to click the link labeled Create @ Username to pick the name that you will be referred to on Facebook. For my daughter, I chose @EvangelinesRecipeBox. At this point you have claimed your page. You can go through at your leisure to follow the steps to complete your profile, such as linking to your website and creating a welcome post.

Instagram

You can create a new Instagram account from this link: https://www.instagram.com/accounts/emailsignup/. You may need to logout or click Switch Accounts if you are already logged in. You will need to enter your mobile number or email address. I used the address that I created in this post associated with the blog. You will also need to enter your full name. I entered my own, since I figure I am the adult and the one ultimately responsible for whatever is posted. You will also choose a username and a password.

On the next page after you create your account, you will need to enter your birthday. Again, I entered my own information, since I am the adult. Lastly, you will be sent a confirmation code to the email address you provided. If you are using Gmail according to the tutorial I provided in this post, you may need to wait up to an hour for it to pull emails from your account. You could also go into the Accounts and Import tab of the Settings page, as described in that post and select, Check Mail Now. Once you have your confirmation code, enter it into the Instagram prompt and you will be all set. You can personalize your account as you see fit.

Pinterest

Pinterest might be another social media account you are interested in claiming, depending on the nature of your blog. If your posts are going to be very visual or tutorial-oriented and you would like to gain traffic, Pinterest is a great place to be. To sign up, simply go to Pinterest.com and log out if you are already logged in. Then click Sign Up. You will be prompted to enter an email address such as the one setup in this post. You will also need a password and your age. Again, I entered my own age.

Once your account is created, they will ask you to select some interests to populate your feed with relevant posts. From there, I recommend selecting the dropdown menu in the upper right corner and going to settings. This will allow you to set your username which will specify which Pinterest web address you are given. From this page, you can also connect your account with your website and add in a description.

Twitter

Last up is Twitter. Personally, I don’t use Twitter, but many people do, so you might as well claim it while you are going through this process. You can go to this link to sign up: https://twitter.com/i/flow/signup

I selected Use Email Instead so that I wouldn’t have to provide my phone number. Once again, I gave it my full name and date of birth since I would be the one posting and not my child. As with Instagram, a confirmation code will be sent to the email address provided that you will need to use to confirm your identity.

Once you are within Twitter, you will likely find that your handle is not what you want. To change it, click on the More button, then select Settings and Privacy.

From the Account tab, you will be able to change your username. Note that your username is limited to 15 characters.

If you would like to change the display name as well, you will need to first setup your profile, then you can edit the profile and change this information.

YouTube

YouTube is a little different than the other social media channels in that it requires you to have a Google account. Thankfully, it is very easy to get a Google account. First, go to this site, then select Use Another Account: https://accounts.google.com/ServiceLogin/signinchooser. You may need to logout if you are already signed in to Google.

Next you will want to select Create Account. I selected To Manage My Business, but really I think Personal would have been more appropriate as I think they intended the Business to be a brick and mortar store. I don’t think it really matter either way.

At this point, you will be prompted to enter your name, desired username, and password.

Next you will be prompted to enter your birthday and some additional information to recover your account if you ever get locked out or forget your password. You will also have to agree to their privacy terms. If you selected that this email was for a business, you will then be prompted to enter a lot of information about your business such as location and store hours. I selected “Skip” for all of these prompts except website.

Once you have a Google account, go to YouTube.com and make sure you are signed in at the upper right hand corner. If not, click sign in, and log in with your new Google Account. From the drop down menu in the upper right corner, you can also select, Create a Channel.

Once you get started creating a channel, you will you likely want to go the route of using a custom name.

You can choose the name you would like for your channel.

Once your channel is created, you can upload a profile picture if you choose. You can also add a description and links to your website and other social media accounts. Unfortunately, in order to have a customized URL, there are certain requirements including having an account that is at least 30 days old and has at least 100 subscribers as well. Once you meet these criteria, you can go to the Basic Info section of the Customization menu to change the URL.

Check Site Health

In the left hand menu, under Tools, you will notice that there is an option to check Site Health. I recommend doing this first.

Update SSL

One of the issues I noticed was that although HTTPS was supported for my site, it was not configured properly. All I had to do to fix this was click the button that said “Update Your Site to Use HTTPS.” That was easy!

Update PHP

I also noticed under Recommended Improvements that my PHP was an older version than is recommended. My guess is that this is just because I happened to sign up during a transition period, but I figure this is a good opportunity to check out HostGator’s customer support.

Do do this I logged into HostGator, clicked the live chat button in the upper right, and then filled out the form saying I need Tech Support for a Website Issue. The question I asked was, “I recently signed up for a shared hosting plan and I noticed that it was installed with PHP 7.3.27. How do I get PHP 7.4 installed.”

Note that on the next page, they will initially try to help you with articles. Scroll down past those articles and hit live chat at the bottom of the page.

I could not believe what an easy and pleasant experience this was! I had my issue taken care of in just minutes with no wait time whatsoever. I am thoroughly impressed! You can read the entire conversation below, if you like.

Delete Old Themes

The Site Health Section also recommends deleting old themes that are not in use. This can be done by going to your Themes under the Appearance section of the left hand menu. If you hover over a theme that you not using and want to delete, you can select Theme Details.

Once you are within a theme’s details, you can choose to delete the theme from the lower right corner. Do this for all the themes you are not using.

Add Useful Plugins to Blog

In addition to the security, anti-spam, and backup plugins that I recommended in my articles on How to Start a Blog for a Kid, there are some other plugins that you may want to consider if you are planning to take the blogging business seriously.

Install a Plugin for SSL

As it is, your blog has an SSL certificate, but it does not automatically redirect http:// to https://. That means users who go to the http:// address will be told that the site is insecure. To fix this, I recommend installing the Really Simple SSL plugin.

You will want to first click Install Now, then Activate. After that it will redirect you to a page where you will click, “Go ahead, activate SSL!” Then you are done!

You can double check that it worked by entering your sites URL using the http:// and not https://. It should automatically redirect to the SSL (https://) version.

Install a Plugin for Speed

Ideally, you want your website to be as fast as possible. You can always pay to speed up your site with a plugin such as WP Rocket. I have always used the free plugin, W3 Total Cache. However, at the moment, the free performance plugin that seems to have best reviews is WP Fastest Cache. I am going to install and activate this plugin on my daughter’s site to check it out.

Once it is activated, you will see WP Fastest Cache in the left hand menu. Click on that and you will have the option to select which settings you want. I checked all the boxes to hopefully maximize my site as much as possible. For some of the options, extra dialogue boxes open once you check a box. I left all of those as the default except for “Preload.” For that one, I just selected homepage, though I may look into it more and go back and change that one at some point. If I do, I will note it here.

Install a Contact Form Plugin

Another feature which is nice to have is a contact page. This is made easy using a contact form plugin. Personally, I have always used the Contact Form 7 plugin, but as I am looking through what is available, I see that Contact Forms by WPForms has much better reviews and is also widely popular. I am going to try that one instead for my daughter’s site. To this, I click Install Now, then Activate.

Once I activated this plugin, it directed me to a page with a 6 minute tutorial for how to use this plugin which was very helpful. Following the instructions in the tutorial, I created a simple form called Contact Me.

Once I created the form, I went to my Pages list, because a contact form was already pre-created with installation. I clicked that I wanted to edit this form.

Once inside this form, I edited the text that was already there and added a new block by clicking the plus sign at the top of the page. Then I scrolled down to the widgets section and selected WPForms. From there, you are able to choose which form you want to include on the page. I only had one listed (Contact Me), so that was the form I chose.

Now I have a clean looking contact page, that I can link to from the main menu! Personally, I prefer this form plugin a lot more than the old one I was using.

Install a Plugin for Social Sharing

If you are hoping to gain traffic to your site, you may want to make it easy for people to share your content. On this site you are currently reading, Research Parent, I actually pay $29 each year for Social Warfare Pro which allows me more customization options. For this site I am building for my daughter, however, I don’t want to pay anything extra, so I will go with a free plugin. The most popular and highly rated plugin at the moment seems to be Social Media Share Buttons Popup & Pop Up Social Sharing Icons. However, with this one I noticed that a lot of the features I wanted seemed to only be available via the premium version. Next I tried Social Sharing Plugin- Sassy Social Share. This one looked more promising in terms of customization, but when I tried to change a single setting, it directed me to the page to update to the premium version.

This is the first real hiccup I am coming across in setting up my daughter’s site. All I really want is some social media icons at the bottom of each post to make sharing easy. Next I am going to try WordPress Social Sharing, Related Posts, and Analytics by Shareholic.

I installed and activated the plugin, then selected Get Started from the prompt that popped up. It asked me a few questions which I answered. It seems to be a winner, right out of the box for me. Within the Apps menu there is a section called Share Buttons, which is what I was hoping to add. I customized each of the four sections, though really the only that is necessary is likely the posts and maybe the pages section.

Within this section I was able to customize the sharing menu to have them look exactly how I wanted. You can also choose which sharing methods you want to promote. I chose Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, a couple recipe sites since my daughter is starting a cooking blog, plus I also added options for email and printing.

This seems like a very powerful plugin. Personally, I chose to disable the floating share buttons. They might be effective, but I find them distracting. You can also use this plugin to link to related content at the bottom of each post which is useful for decreasing your bounce rate and getting visitors to stay longer. You can also set up follow buttons for each of the platforms you are active on. When I update my daughter’s theme and finish customizing how I want it to look, I will likely use this feature to add follow buttons to a sidebar. This Shareaholic plugin also gives you the option to add sharing icons on top of images, which is a helpful feature if you have a very visual blog. There are a lot of other options, as well, but I don’t see myself using them anytime soon.

Install a Comment Subscription Plugin

Depending on the purpose of your blog, you may or may not even have comments turned on. However, if you do, having a “subscribe to comments” feature is nice to have. This means that when someone comments on your blog and subscribes, they will get an email notification when you reply to their comment. This allows bloggers to have a back and forth dialogue with their readers. The plugin that I have used for this purpose, which has worked out well for me is called Subscribe to Comments Reloaded.

This plugin will work right out of the gate. The only change I made to the default settings was I told it to check the box that subscribes a commenter by default. If they do not want to subscribe, they will have to uncheck this box. You can find this setting under the StCR (Subscribe to Comments Reloaded) menu on the left hand side, under Comment Form.

Install a Plugin for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

If this blog is just for fun, then you absolutely do not need to consider search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is the process by which you try to write your blog posts to make them most likely to be ranked highly by Google or some other search engine. This can be helpful if you want to receive traffic through search engines. However, if you don’t care about your SEO and you don’t want to write to try to manipulate some sort of computer algorithm, then you probably don’t need this plugin.

If you do care about SEO, then you will want to install Yoast SEO. This is by far the most popular go-to plugin for this purpose with over 5 million installs. An advantage of this plugin is that it will tell you how clearly you are writing, which can be good to know even if you don’t care about SEO. I do not change any of the default settings. If you like, you can go through the configuration wizard and it will help customize how your site appears on Google and other search engines. You can also sign up for their newsletter or watch their tutorials which will guide you through the process of maximizing the plugin’s benefit.

“Starting a Blog” Series

This post will be part of a multi-part series! I will add links as I write and post these articles.

• Part 1: How to Start a Blog for a Kid
• Part 2: Setting Up HostGator Email
• Part 3: I’ve Set Up My Blog! Now What? (this post)
• Part 4: Customizing a Premium WordPress Theme
• Part 5: Monetizing Your Blog

The post I’ve Setup My Blog! Now What? appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

Create an Email Address using Domain Name

Of course you could always just create a Gmail account to use for blog business, but it looks more professional if you have an email address of the form so_and_so@my_domain_name.com. To do this you will need to create the address with your hosting company. As I explained in the post, How to Start a Blog for a Kid, I decided to use HostGator. Assuming you have also used HostGator, you will first need to login to HostGator using the email address and password you created during the sign in process.

From the Dashboard, I see there is a link for Email Accounts, so I am going to try clicking on that.

I see that the email setup process seems pretty straightforward. You will put in the username that you would like to create an email address for, then setup a password. It also looks like you have an option of limiting the size of your mailbox or not. I do not see any reason to limit this amount if it doesn’t cost any extra to have an unlimited mailbox. I chose Unlimited than selected Create Account.

Configure Gmail to Send and Receive Emails from this Address

Next you will want to configure whatever mail client you use to collect this email. This could be something like Microsoft Outlook or Windows Live Mail.

Personally, I would like the email from this account to be forward to my personal Gmail account which I check regularly. In Gmail, it is possible to send and receive emails from another account. To do this, you click on the gear icon within Gmail, then click See All Settings.

From the Settings Menu, you will want to select Accounts and Import from the top menu. If you will scroll down until you see Send Mail As. Then you will select Add Another Email Address.

You will be prompted to enter the name associated with the account and the email address. I also choose to uncheck the Treat as an Alias button. In my mind, this is a separate account for a separate person, but I’m not sure how much this actually matters. It has always worked for me leaving it unchecked.

When you click on Next Step, it will take you to a screen in which you will need to enter some information. To find that information, you will need to go back to HostGator and click on the link that says Set Up Mail Client.

Specifically, what you will need are the Manual Settings located at the bottom of the page. You may want to write this information and store it somewhere or take a picture with your phone as you will need it to complete the setup process.

In the Outgoing Server section of this box you will find the information that Gmail is asking for. This will allow Gmail to send email using this account. You will also need to fill in the password that you created when you setup the email account. When you are finished, select Add Account.

To verify that this is your account, you will need to read an email that was sent this account. That is a bit of a hiccup. To read the email, we will need to login to the email from HostGator’s version of Webmail. If you hit the back button within the HostGator page, you will go back to the email setup page. From here, you can hit the More dropdown button as shown and select Access Webmail.

From here you will have to select a Webmail Application. I do not think it matters, so I went with the first one, Horde.

From here you should see the email that Gmail sent you. You can open the email and get the code that Gmail wants.

I chose to enter the Gmail Verification Code in the box that was still open from Gmail.

Now I am all setup to send email from this account!

To receive email from this account in my personal Gmail inbox, I will need to go back to Gmail’s Accounts and Import Settings and “Add a mail account” in the Check Mail From Other Accounts section.

First, you will just need to enter the email address you want to check. Click Next.

Next, you will select the option to “Import emails from my other account (POP3)” and select Next. Again you will need the information that you noted above from HostGator regarding the Manual Settings.

Personally, I choose to leave a copy of the messages on the original server. I also always use a secure connection. however, I don’t label my incoming messages and I do not archive them. These are my personal preferences.

Now you are all set to send and receive emails from your personal Gmail account!

Change Admin Email in WordPress

Once you have your email all configured and you know how to send and receive emails from this address, you may want to consider changing the admin email from within your site’s settings. This will effect where notifications go, such as those for comments or from the contact forms that you will eventually set up. To do this, you simply go into the Settings menu on the left hand side of your WordPress dashboard, then change the Administrator Email Address under the General submenu.

“Starting a Blog” Series

This post will be part of a multi-part series! I will add links as I write and post these articles.

• Part 1: How to Start a Blog for a Kid
• Part 2: Setting Up Hostgator Email (this post)
• Part 3: I’ve Set Up My Blog! Now What?
• Part 4: Customizing a Premium WordPress Theme
• Part 5: Monetizing Your Blog

The post How to Setup HostGator Email appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

My 9 year old would like to start a cooking blog. She is a strong reader, but just learning how to write comfortably. She has no experience typing. However, she loves to cook and create her own recipes in the kitchen. My current thought on the matter is, why not? I have given her the green light. I will start it for her and as she grows older, she can add to it as she likes. I think this will both encourage her creativity and motivate her to work on her writing and typing skills.

Choosing a Blog Platform

In my life, I have created several blogs. This one that you are reading is the only one I have ever created for myself. That was 7 years ago and it was my introduction to the world of blogging. Since then, I have set up some websites for friends and modified websites for others. Because I am cheap, and especially because I don’t anticipate my daughter to spend a lot of energy on this blog right away, personally I like to go with the cheapest option possible. That rules out Square Space, Wix, and other site builders that do a lot of the heavy lifting for you. If you have the room in your budget for these drag-and-drop site builders, I say go for it! They are know for being extremely user-friendly and may well be worth the cost for you. They start in the vicinity of $15/month depending on what you want.

However, since I want to go the cheaper route, I set aside those options from consideration. However, I also steer clear of the free options, like wordpress.com or blogger.com. The reason I choose not to use these free options is because I like having control of all aspects of my blog. I have heard there are also a lot more restrictions on the ways you can monetize your blog. For example, this blog is profitable, because I have an ad manager, Mediavine, which places ads for me throughout my site. I also share Amazon Affiliate links throughout this blog that link to products we use and enjoy.

The blog platform I choose for my child’s blog is a self-hosted WordPress site. It is slightly more expensive than a free site (typically around $5/month starting out), but worth the extra cost. A self-hosted site gives her the freedom to customize her blog to her heart’s content. It also means she owns the content and has complete autonomy in deciding what she wants to put on her blog (with parent-approval, of course). Most importantly, if one day she wants to turn her blog into a business, it makes it easy to monetize. While it’s a little harder to use than a site builder like SquareSpace, it is not difficult once you get the hang of it.

Choosing a Hosting Company

I am going to write and work through the steps of starting a blog for my daughter as I do them. I have not already set up the blog. I am going to set it up as I write and take notes on my thoughts along the way. If you have decided to go the self-hosted WordPress route as I have, the first major step in setting up a blog is to decide on company to host your WordPress blog.

I have worked with several blog hosting companies over the past few years. The only mistake I have ever made is that the very first time I started a blog, the one you are currently reading, I went with the absolute cheapest company I could find. The company was JustHost and it cost only $2.25/month if you prepaid for 3 years. I had never heard of JustHost before, but since I was new to the blogging world, I had never heard of ANY blogging companies. I had nothing but problems. Apparently, because I was using shared hosting and they were not good at monitoring what was being shared, my site was blacklisted from several servers, because I was at the same IP address as a site that had been marked as malicious. I contacted the company repeatedly, and was give no help. Eventually, I had to have my site migrated over to another company. At that time, I went with Bluehost.

Through this negative experience, I have learned that I want to go with a big, well-known, and well-established company. Even if they are slightly more expensive, I think it is worth having that extra level of protection. The three companies that I am most familiar with and know all have decent customer service are Bluehost, HostGator, and SiteGround. In choosing a blog hosting company for my daughter, I am going to decide between one of these three well-known companies.

Honestly, while they are all similar, in the past I have had the best experience with SiteGround. I know it to be easy to use and their customer service was very helpful. One advantage of SiteGround over the other companies is that they include automatic daily backups. However, as I am looking at their features and pricing, I see that it is about twice as expensive as Bluehost and HostGator at $6.99/month. It also seems to limit the amount of webspace you are given to 10 GB, which though large, appears to be less than the other two companies. It also does not include a free domain for 1 year. As much as I like SiteGround, at this point, I am going to eliminate them from the running.

Now I am down to comparing Bluehost and Hostgator. I like that they both include a free SSL certificate, which is great for planning ahead in case a store might one day be added to the site. They also both provide a free domain registration for one year, which is helpful if you have not already purchased a URL. Hostgator has unlimited storage for all plans while Bluehost has a limit of 50 GB for the cheapest plan (though to be fair, I do not think my daughter will ever reach 50 GB). When I search for reviews online, it appears that Bluehost and HostGator both have relatively similar page load times and uptimes.

I know that I am planning to prepay for 3 years of hosting, because that locks in the discounted rate for as long as possible. HostGator is $2.75/month for a single shared website. Bluehost is $3.95/month, which is considerably more, but not necessarily a determining factor for me, as it is still relatively inexpensive. At this point however, HostGator is looking like the winner to me as Bluehost does not appear to have any significant advantages. Both companies have A+ ratings from the Better Business Bureau. PCMag gives HostGator a score of 4.5/5 and Bluehost a score of 4/5.

That is enough convincing for me. I have decided to go with HostGator’s least expensive shared hosting plan to start a website for my daughter. (Since writing this post, I have signed up for an affiliate account with Hostgator. If you use my link, I will earn a commission.)

Signing up with HostGator

Now that I have made the decision to go with HostGator, I will sign up for an account. Whichever company you decide to go with, if you want the cheapest option, make sure you select Shared Hosting. Even though you will be creating a WordPress site, do NOT select Managed WordPress or you will unnecessarily end up paying a lot more.

The price will likely change over time, but if you are only planning to start one blog, I recommend going with the least expensive, “Hatchling,” plan.

Step 1: Choose a Domain Name

If you have not already decided on a domain name, now will be your time to choose one. Personally, I have never had luck getting my first choice of domain name. Research Parent was what I came up with after finding out about a dozen other options were not available. We also just discovered that my daughter’s domain name of choice, Evangeline’s Kitchen, is not available. Now is the time get out the thesaurus and get those creative juices flowing to come up with something unique and original.

Note that if you have already purchased a domain name at another site, like GoDaddy.com, there is a tab where you can enter in this information.

At the bottom of this section, you will also have the choice to add Domain Privacy Protection if you like for $14.95/year. You will have to unselect the checkbox if you do not want to pay for this service. If you choose not to pay for this protection, people who are knowledgeable about how to do these searches will be able to find the name and mailing address associated with this domain. As I have a PO Box, this does not concern me much, but you may want to add this extra layer of anonymity to your site.

So, what did we come up with? We are not the proud owners of EvangelinesRecipeBox.com.

Step 2: Choosing a Hosting Plan

In step 2 you will be able to choose your plan and your term. I went with a 36 month Hatching plan to get the best deal and lock in this price.

Step 3: Create a HostGator Profile

In step 3, you will need to enter in your personal information and create an account password and pin.

Step 4: Enter Billing Info

We all have a lot of experience with this.

Step 5: Add Additional Services

This is where you can end up spending a lot more money if you don’t think things through. Personally, I am going to choose to skip all of these, in order to go with cheaper alternatives that will require a little more work to setup later on, but ultimately give me more control. You may or may not choose to make the same decisions. By adding the options that HostGator recommends, through HostGator, they will likely be more helpful if you ever need to contact their customer service regarding one of these issues later on. Let’s work through these one by one.

SSL Certificate

You are already paying for free SSL which will protect your customer’s information if you decide to have a store. There is no need to upgrade, especially if you do not plan to have a store on your site. If one day my daughter does want to add a store to her blog, we can upgrade if needed, but that will be far in the future.

Sitelock Essentials

This one is tempting as your site WILL ABSOLUTELY NEED SOME SORT OF PROTECTION. Personally, I am going to go with one of the free options like Securi or Wordfence, which I will show you how to install when I get to that point. However, if you think that sounds like too much work and are not planning to take that extra 5 minute step, then I recommend paying $2/month to not have to worry about it.

Professional Email

Every hosting company I have ever worked with in the past has included at least one free email address. I could not find this information on HostGator’s website and had a very fast and pleasant experience. As I expected, they do include email addresses (unlimited).

This extra “professional email” option that they are promoting is connected to Microsoft 365, which I do not need. I will likely create an email address using my daughter’s domain, then have it forwarded to a gmail account we use regularly, which will be free.

Site Backup

Site backup is definitely a feature you will want to have. However, I have used the free version of Updraft Plus in the past and I was happy with it, so I will choose that free option instead. I will show you how to install that plugin when I get to that step.

HostGator SEO Tools

You will only need Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools if you are planning to turn your blog into a business. As this site is for my child, this capability is not critical at this point. However, even if you do care about the blogs search engine rankings, as with the malware protection and site backup, I would personally opt for a free option, such as Yoast.

Step 6: Enter Coupon Code

You will definitely want to put something in this box. Mine was already auto-populated with SHARED3665. I imagine yours will automatically be auto-populated as well as these companies are always running some sort of promotion, but it not, I would search Google for HostGator coupon code.

Step 7: Review Order Details

For right around $100, I have 3 years worth of hosting set up! Check the box saying you have read the terms of service and then hit Checkout Now.

Installing WordPress

Now that I have successfully made my purchase, I need to get WordPress installed on my account. This is the page that I am immediately presented with after my order is complete. I am going to start by viewing my Dashboard.

From my Dashboard, I see I have the option to Create Website and Install WordPress, both of which look promising. I am going to click Create Website, just because it seems like it might be the more user-friendly route.

Creating a WordPress site is their heavily recommended advice, so I will select “Get Started.”

After about 1 to 2 minutes of waiting, it told me my WordPress account was ready! Success! This process has definitely gotten a lot easier than when I first started making websites 7 years ago. Make sure you that you note your Username, Password, and WordPress login URL info somewhere safe!

If I go to our website, I see that it is up and running with some place holder information.

Logging into Your Site

To log into your website, you will want to go to the URL listed for the WordPress login from your confirmation page. It is always your website URL with /wp-admin added to the end. You will use the username and password they provided on that same page.

Now you will get your first view of the WordPress dashboard. It can be intimidating at first, but the more you or your child use it, the more comfortable you will get. They have some helpful links to get you started writing Your First Blog Post, an About Page, and Setting up Your Homepage. Another option I see which may be useful is Turning Comments On or Off. Depending on the age of your child and how closely you plan to monitor the site, you may want to turn commenting off at least initially.

Protecting Your WordPress Site

Before you can get to the joy of blogging, there are a few maintenance steps that you will want to take to ensure that all your hard work is protected. Thankfully, these steps will only have to be taken once.

Install a Security Plugin

All of these options can be fun to play around with, but what I care about most at the moment is making sure my site is secure and up-to-date. After doing a little research, I am planning to install the free Sucuri plugin. Another great free security plugin is Wordfence, which I have also used in the past. There is a paid version of both of these options and if the blog ever becomes profitable, I will definitely look into protecting it more thoroughly, but for now the free option is sufficient for my needs.

To install Sucuri, first I click on Add New from the Plugin menu along the left hand menu. Then I typed in Sucuri into the search box. Next I will click Install Now. After it is Installed you will have to click the Activate button to turn it on.

Remove Unneeded Pre-Installed Plugins

If you click on your list of Installed Plugins, you will notice that WordPress came pre-installed with a number of options. The fewer plugins your site uses, the faster it will run, so personally I recommend getting rid of anything you don’t need. If you later decide you would like to add some of these features, like a pop-up to gain subscribers, you can always add a plugin later. WordPress is very flexible in that way. Personally, the only pre-installed plugin I chose to keep is Akismet Anti-spam. The rest of them I deactivated and deleted until all I had left was Akismet and Sucuri.

Setup Anti-Spam Plugin

Akismet is a very effective anti-spam plugin. You will first want to hit Activate underneath its name in the Installed Plugins section (or install the plugin as you did with the security plugin if it did not come pre-installed). Once you activate it, you should see a page like this. Select “Set up your Akismet account.”

Especially for a child’s hobby blog, you will want to select a Personal account. If you would like to donate some money to the company I am sure they would appreciate that. Otherwise, you can name your price to be free.

You will need to enter your name, email address, your website’s address, and confirm that you are not operating your blog for a profit. They will then send a confirmation code to the email address you provided, which you will need to copy and paste back into their site. Once you are successfully registered, they will send you an email with your special Akismet code and show this page with the remaining steps.

You will want to go back to your Installed Plugins then click Settings under Akismet. You will choose the “Manually enter an API key” option and then copy paste in the code sent to your email address. Once you “Connect with API key” you will be protected from spam!

Install a Backup Plugin

Another good thing to have when you are maintaining a blog is a backup plan. Personally, thankfully, (knock on wood), I have never needed to revert to a backup, but it gives me peace of mind to know they are there. The only plugin I have ever used is Updraft Plus, though there are other options available as well. To install Updraft Plus, go back to the Add New option from the Plugins menu on the left hand side of your Dashboard. Type Updraft Plus into the search bar, then Install and Activate the plugin.

Once it is installed and activated, you will want to customize your settings. You can either click the Settings button under Updraft Plus from the Installed Plugins page of you can click “Press Here to Start.”

You can hit “Backup Now” to create your first site backup. After that, you will want to go to the Settings tab. Personally, I choose to have my site backed up weekly, since I really only work on my website on weekends. I also chose to save 4 backups so that I would have a months worth of backups. If you like, you can also choose to store your backups remotely so that if your site gets hacked, you will have them stored somewhere safe. Personally, I am choosing to connect to Dropbox as I already have a Dropbox account. Make sure you save your changes then follow the authentication prompts for whichever backup method you choose!

Customizing Your Site’s Appearance

Before you write your first blog post, you may want to take a moment to customize how your site looks.

Choosing a Theme

A theme is the overarching wrapper that determines how your site looks. There are plenty of free versions and ones you can pay for as well. Since I have already purchased a theme for the site you are currently reading, I will likely install this theme for my daughter as well, since there is no extra cost. The main advantage of using a purchased theme in addition to being able to customize the overall layout and feel of your website, is that purchased themes are often more mobile-friendly.

However, there are plenty of decent free themes as well. Your site will be pre-installed with WordPress’s current free theme of choice. For us, that was the Twenty Twenty-One version. To see which theme you have, you can click on Appearance in the left hand menu, and then Themes. If you would like to choose a different theme, you just hover over it and the click Activate. Or you can select Add New and then search the database.

Customize Your Theme

For demonstration purposes, I am going to stick with the free, pre-installed Twenty Twenty-One WordPress theme. I may create another tutorial when I update my daughter’s theme to the paid version to talk about more customization options.

To customize your theme, you can either click Customize from the Themes menu on your active theme or you can click Customize under the left hand Appearance Menu. From there, start with your Site Identity Menu, where you can upload a logo if you want. You can also enter your site name and tagline then show whether or not you want them to appear. Just to give a sense of what it could look like with minimal effort, I downloaded a free picture from Pixabay.com which is a great place to get royalty-free stock images that you do not need to attribute. Note that your logo will appear small, but that is so that it appears correctly on phones and tablets as well. I tried once to make my logo bigger, but that ended up messing up the way it appeared on smaller devices.

From these customization menus, you will also be able to change the background color and specify whether or not you want your site to have a dark mode for visitors that are in dark locations.

Eventually, my daughter may want to create a static homepage that directs visitors to different sections of her blog. However, especially while there isn’t much content, I think it makes sense to show the latest blog posts on the homepage. If your child has a vision for how they want their homepage to look, it might make sense to have them follow tutorials to design their homepage.

If you do choose to use your homepage to show your blog posts instead of making a static, unchanging homepage, then you will want to remove the word “Blog” from the upper right menu. That button will no long do anything if your homepage is where your blog posts are published. To change back at a later date, you can always set what page to show your blog posts on in the Reading Menu under settings in the left hand menu bar. There are a couple different ways to change your menus, but one way is to click on the Menu button from the Customize section. If you click the arrow next to the Primary menu, you will see the Blog entry, which you can then remove. You may also want to get rid of the contact page from the menu if you do not want anyone contacting your child. You can use the same technique to remove this link.

Once you are all done, you hit Publish in the upper left and the changes will go into effect!

Some Housekeeping Tasks

Before you start blogging, there are a few items you may want to take care of first. This will just make sure you start the way you intend to go.

Change How Images are Saved

One other change that I might recommend is if you go into Settings, under Media, I choose to uncheck that box that says to organize uploads into months and year-based folders. This is just a personal preference, but it is the one other change I am going to make at this point before we start uploading images.

Change Blog Post URL Format

By default, WordPress wants to include the date in the URL of each of your blog posts. Personally, I don’t like this. Therefore, one other change that I prefer to make is under the Settings and Permalink menu. I change the Permalink Settings to just be Post Name.

Create a Privacy Policy

Creating a privacy policy is just a good practice by default and WordPress has already created a draft page for you. If you click on Pages in the left hand menu, you will see a Privacy Policy page is one of the few pages that are premade. If you click on Edit under the privacy page, you will be taken to a page where you can set up your privacy policy. If this is the first time you have opened up the content editor, it will give you a little tutorial to get you started. If this pops up, click Next to learn more about WordPress. If not, don’t worry!

After you get past a tutorial, you will notice that they have already included a suggested privacy policy for you. All I am going to do is remove every instance of “Suggested text:” and otherwise leave it untouched. Then I will officially publish this page. Note that you will have to hit the Publish button twice to confirm that you want to publish each page.

Next Steps!

You now have a barebones blog, protected from cyber attacks, organized, and ready to be filled with delicious content!

You may want to start by editing your About page. To do this, click on Pages in the left hand menu. You should see an About page already premade for you. Click Edit under the about page. You will be able to change the text and add images as you see fit using the WordPress block editor. To add blocks, click on the plus sign in the upper left hand corner

Once you are done, if you want to get out of this fullscreen editing mode, you can uncheck fullscreen in the upper right 3 dot dropdown menu.

If instead you want to make a blog post, you can hit the Add New button under the Post section of the left hand menu bar. Another way to open up a blank post is to hit the plus sign at the top of the screen. From there you will also be able to add text and images using WordPress’s block editor. If you need extra explanations on how to use the block editor, you may want to look for tutorials online. Personally, I think the best way to learn to use it is just to play around with it.

Hopefully in the future I will make some tutorials on how to setup email, choose and implement a new theme, and create a static home page. It is easier to create a homepage once you have a few blog posts under your belt, otherwise your homepage doesn’t have anywhere to send your visitors.

I also plan to do a post on how to set your blog up to be monetized. Even though my daughter does not have any intention of trying to make her blog profitable anytime soon, it is a good idea to claim social media accounts as soon as possible, just to make sure you own them for any future endeavors. I will also save explaining how to sign up for Google Adsense and an Amazon Affiliate account for a later date.

Happy blogging!

“Starting a Blog” Series

This post will be part of a multi-part series! I will add links as I write and post these articles.

• Part 1: How to Start a Blog for a Kid (this post)
• Part 2: Setting Up Hostgator Email
• Part 3: I’ve Set Up My Blog! Now What?
• Part 4: Customizing a Premium WordPress Theme
• Part 5: Monetizing Your Blog

The post How to Start a Blog for a Kid appeared first on ResearchParent.com.

I decided I wanted to give my son an at-home, less expensive computer building experience. I’ve built a number of desktop computers from the ground up by individually choosing all the components. I was initially planning to replicate that process, but build around an inexpensive Raspberry Pi instead of a motherboard and processor. However, the more I looked into the Kano kit, the more I was impressed with how user-friendly, and more importantly, kid-friendly, it seems to be.

While I’m sure I could have put together a Raspberry Pi computer from scratch for under $100, I paid the premium with the goal that my nearly 8 year old son would put this computer together with no assistance from me. For the most part, he succeeded. He did need me to a help him read a couple words in the very child-friendly manual, help him snap in the cover of the case, and understand some of the prompts on the screen once we turned it on. However, as you’ll see from the picture tutorial below, it really is straightforward enough that a child can do it on their own.

So what did I get for the extra cost besides everything we needed in a cute little box? For one, a very child-friendly instruction manual that explains all the steps of assembly in colorful, easy-to-understand pictures and not-overly-wordy directions. Another benefit is that the Kano operating system is designed specifically for children. It comes preloaded with a bunch of educational applications for kids, some of which I’ll discuss briefly after the tutorial. My son is most excited about Hack Minecraft. He’s been using it for about a month now and is still having a ton of fun with it (and actually programming!). I’m most excited about Scratch, MIT’s programming language for kids. We haven’t started using it yet, but I’m looking forward to digging into that more when we have some free time.

Recommended Age Range: Elementary, Middle School
Time Required: ~40 minutes
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: $120-$150 for the Kano Computer Kit

Supplies:

• Kano computer kit
• TV or computer monitor

Instructions:

1. Open the box and take out all the pieces.
2. The kit comes with a micro SD card inside an adapter the size of a standard SD card. First, the child needs to pull the micro SD card out of the adapter.



3. Next the child needs to insert this card into the Raspberry Pi. This memory card will store the computer’s data.



4. The next step is to assemble the case to protect the Raspberry Pi. When my son was doing this on his own, he first accidentally put the case together WITHOUT the Raspberry side inside. Since the case needs to be assembled around the Raspberry Pi, he had to try again. No harm done. He got it right on the second try. Note that you also have to make sure that the case is assembled such that the holes in the case line up with the ports in the Raspberry Pi.



5. The speaker is on the lid to the case. Before you snap in the lid/speaker, you need to plug the speaker’s power cord into the Raspberry Pi. The instructions give a graphical illustration of where the speaker’s power wire should be connected. I watched carefully at this point to make sure that my son plugged the connector into the correct pins. The connector should be plugged into the row of pins closest to the edge of the board into the second and third pins from the short edge. When it is connected, the red wire should be closer to the short end of the case than the black wire.





6. Next, clip the lid with the speaker into the top of the case. My son had a little trouble getting it to click, so I helped him with this step.



7. Plug in the blue speaker cord into the speaker jack so that the Raspberry Pi can send sound to the speaker.



8. Now the child needs to attach the computer to a screen in order to see what it can do. Open up the yellow HDMI cable.



9. If you have a computer monitor lying around, you can use that. However, since we didn’t have one and I didn’t want to buy one, we’ve just been using our TV. (Most TV’s have multiple inputs, so you can leave it plugged in and just switch inputs to watch TV.) Plug the yellow cable into one of the HDMI ports on your TV or monitor as shown. I actually did this step, just to make sure my son didn’t knock over our TV.



10. Then plug the other end of the HDMI cable into the HDMI port of the computer.



11. Next comes the keyboard. My son first took off the sticker from the red charging cable. However, the keyboard ships already charged and even though he’s used it for several hours, so far he hasn’t needed to charge the keyboard. When the keyboard stops working or starts acting funny, it will be time to charge it.



12. Push the red power button to turn on the keyboard.



13. Remove the small white USB piece from the keyboard. This is a radio antenna so that the computer can wirelessly talk to the keyboard.



14. Plug the radio antenna into any of the USB ports on the computer.



15. To give power to the computer connect the USB-end of the red cable into the red power brick.



16. Plug the other end of the red power cable into the matching port on the computer.



17. Pull the prongs out of the power brick.



18. Plug in the power brick. Do this step for your child if you’re not comfortable with them doing it themselves.



19. After you plug in your computer, it is already turned on. If your TV/monitor is not showing the computer’s black and white prompt, you may need to change the input on your device. I did this by hitting the “input” button on my TV’s remote and then trying the HDMI inputs until I found the one connected to the computer. This input selection process may be slightly different for your device.



20. Once the correct input was selected, we saw this greeting from our Kano computer.



21. Use the keyboard to type in your name.



22. Next, we were asked to type in the password. My son assumed he could make up his own password at this point, but found he actually needed to type “kano.”



23. Next, a Matrix-y looking game appeared which required my son to use the arrow keys on his keyboard.



24. When he got to the end of the mini game, he got to another screen that showed him how to use the mouse to move and click using his keyboard.
25. My son continued to follow the prompts to connect to our wireless (I had to give him our family’s wireless password).
26. Next he was guided through creating his own little customized character.



27. After all the initial setup, we made it to the desktop filled with pages and pages of programs and apps.



28. Explore and enjoy!

My son has been using this computer for about a month now. I choose to limit his screen time to about 20 minutes per day. So far, all he’s chosen to do with his time is play Hack Minecraft, but he hasn’t grown bored with it. Even though he can only read at about a 2nd grade level, he is still able to follow the tutorials to program “superpowers.”

One feature that seems great, but so far he’s only explored a little bit, is Story Mode. It seems like this is a very kid-friendly way to walk through all that the computer is capable of doing while learning about the parts of a computer. The character is walking around in a world that is built on top of a Raspberry Pi. As they move around, the user learns about the different components. For example, this is the red power cable. By talking to the man near the power cable, the child learns more about the power cable including that it is important to make sure you shut down properly so you don’t lose data.

As I mentioned, as a computer programmer, I am most excited to dive into Scratch which was designed as a programming language for kids. Given the wild imaginations of my kids (and children in general), I’m excited to see what sort of crazy things they create.

Overall, I am pretty pleased with the way this little computer building experience has turned out. On the downside, my son has run into some minor glitches using the software. For example, he has been told he didn’t shut down properly when he swears he did. Also, there was one time when Hack Minecraft seemed unable to switch back to hack mode until he restarted the device. Given the low cost of the device compared to an ACTUAL laptop or computer, issues like these don’t bother me too much. Minor frustrations associated with using technology seem to be an unavoidable fact of life.

On the positive side, he really was able to assemble this computer almost entirely alone. He gained some confidence working with electronics and some familiarity with the parts of a computer. For the most part, I’ve also let him navigate his way around the software as well. Despite the minor frustrations that has involved, he has had a really good time exploring and learning. The kid-friendly operating system Kano put together really is a fun little playground for kids to start programming.

If you have any questions, please let me know!

Click here for more Computer Science and Engineering activities for kids.

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Edited to Add: Patrons can now get an expanded e-book version of this printable with additional mazes and detailed printable instructions. Cancel any time. Learn more here.

I’m so honored to be a part of the 28 Days of Hands-On STEM Activities series hosted by Left Brain Craft Brain this year. The free, printable “Coding a LEGO Maze” activity that I’ve created as part of this series can grow with kids. Children as young as 5 or 6 can attempt the easiest challenges, while the concepts introduced in the harder challenges are covered in any introduction to programming class.

There are so many baby steps involved in learning how to think like a programmer. Throughout the past several years, I’ve programmed in at least 6 different computer languages (C, C++, Java, Fortran, Matlab, and Python). For a beginner, what’s important is not the specifics of a language (called the syntax). Rather it’s better to understand the commonalities between languages which are the building blocks of any programming language. These LEGO mazes, which can be solved with “code” using paper rather than a computer, illustrate 4 levels of difficulty and include a variety of programming concepts. While these Levels will be described in more detail below, here is a quick overview:

• Level 1: The child can see the specific problem at hand and step by step walk their LEGO figure out of the maze. Like the game Robot Turtles, this easiest level teaches the child to think from a point of reference different than their own. The child’s left may not be the same as the figure-in-the-maze’s left, but even the youngest kids can learn this valuable skill of switching reference frame.
• Level 2: Hopefully, by the time they’ve mastered Level 1, your child will realize that it’s a bit tedious to tell the character to move forward 7 times in a row. Rather, it would be handy to just have a way to say “Do this next command 7 times.” This level introduces the concept of “for loops.”
• Level 3: Older children might be ambitious enough at this point to realize that an awful lot of work goes into solving a specific maze using the method of Levels 1 and 2. With the introduction of “while loops” and “if statements”, kids can challenge themselves to write as short a program as possible to solve a specific maze. The programmer just needs to consider all possibilities at any random location for their LEGO figure and decide the best generic sequence of actions. For example, what should the character do if there’s an opening to their left? What if they’ve hit a dead end?
• Level 4: While kids will hopefully experience success in Level 3, they will likely find that if they try to use their code on a different maze, it may not work. It’s possible that their figure will get stuck in what programmers call an “infinite loop”, repeating the same behavior over and over again without being able to escape. By introducing a random number generator, older kids can write a program that can get their figure out of any maze.

At the end of this process, the most mature kids will realize that it would be great if their LEGO figure could remember where he had already been so that he could systematically cover ground instead of seeming to wander aimlessly. This could motivate a discussion of more advanced programming concepts such as memory and stored variables.

Recommended Age Range: Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle School, High School
Time Required: ~1 hour if laminating
Difficulty: Easy to prepare, Level 3 and 4 challenges may only be appropriate for kids in late elementary or older
Cost: Free printable, less than $2 to laminate (does not include cost of LEGO or DUPLO bricks which are optional)

Materials:

• Paper for printing Coding a LEGO Maze free printable
• Thermal laminating pouches

Supplies & Tools:

• Thermal laminator
• Scissors
• Paper cutter (optional)
• LEGO figure (or other figure of similar size)
• LEGO or DUPLO bricks (optional)

Instructions:

1. The first time only, you will need to print, laminate (optional, but recommended), and cut out all the pieces in the Coding a LEGO Maze free printable.

2. Next, you will need to set up your maze. You can use any of the 5 provided mazes or if you choose, you can make your own maze with the blank grid provided. Once you’ve selected your maze, there are 3 options for setup:
Option 1: If you do not have LEGO or DUPLO pieces or if you would just rather save time, you can use the provided mazes as-is. You just need a figure to place on your maze that has a front, so that you know which way it is facing.
Option 2: If you are a fan of LEGO, you can cover the gray parts of the provided mazes with LEGO bricks.

Option 3: If you are a fan of DUPLO, I recommend cutting out the white part of the maze, placing it on a DUPLO board and then covering the board with DUPLO bricks to form the walls. You could also just place the DUPLO pieces directly on the laminated maze, but I found that didn’t work very well as the walls needed to be pretty high in order to have all the pieces connected together, which makes it hard to move the figure.

Once you’re finished, your maze might look something like this:

Or this:

Level 1: The first step for youngest kids is to teach them how to think from the point of view (reference frame) of the character in the maze. To do this, place the figure at the start of the maze and give your child all the green cards in 3 piles (Go Forward, Turn Right, and Turn Left). Your child needs to place the instructions that he or she thinks the character needs to follow into a long list. For example, in the LEGO (not DUPLO) maze above, construction worker Emmet needs to: Go Forward, Go Forward, Go Forward, Turn Right, Go Forward, etc. I had my 6 year old place all the cards he thought he would need to get Emmet out of the maze into a list. I was planning to move the figure myself using the “code” he had written, but he really wanted to move his character himself. I had him follow each command one at a time and flip over the cards as he executed them. This worked out great. My only caution is that you should pay attention to left and right turns. When Emmet was walking toward him, my son placed a Turn Right card when really he needed a Turn Left. When he got to that card as he was flipping them over, I had him place the card in Emmet’s hands to show him his mistake. He caught on and fixed it right away.

Level 2: Once your child is good at Level 1, you can show them how they can use a loop that says “For ___ Steps” to do a command rather than just repeating the same card over and over. For the example above, the solution would look as shown. Notice that the command (or commands) inside a “for” loop are indented slightly. Not all coding languages are picky about this indent, but some are, and it makes the code more human readable anyway, so it’s a good habit to get in. At the end of the “for” loop, you place an “End” card to note where the loop ends. Again, not all programming languages require this “end” command, but many do.

Level 3: I know my kindergartner is far from this step, but eventually, once kids are able to think more abstractly, you can teach them about conditional “if” statements. Once I learned about if statements in college, I couldn’t stop applying them to my daily life. It basically felt like every decision could be summarized using one of these decision trees. For example, if I was trying to decide where to have dinner, I might think something like:”IF my friend Kelly is free,
—> then I will go get Thai food with her.
ELSE IF they are serving something edible at my dorm’s cafeteria,
—> then I’ll pick something up there.
ELSE
—> I will stay in my dorm room and have some cereal and ice cream.
END IF.”

Thankfully, I grew out of that after I stopped spending tens of hours in the computer lab each week.

Basically, when you are writing a program, you think about all the possibilities and evaluate what you should do in each case and in what order (or with what priority). For example, our character in a maze only faces a limited number of options. He may or may not have walls in front of him or to his left or to his right. However, there are so many possible codes that can be written based on these limited options. The child could decide to tell their person to follow this command: “If there is no wall in front of me, go forward. End.” That code alone will actually solve one of the provided mazes. For mazes that require turns, they may come up with something more like the code below.

This code basically translates to the following instructions: “If I can turn left, turn left. Otherwise if I can turn right, turn right. Otherwise if I hit a dead end, turn around. After I’m done checking those conditions, go forward. Repeat.” The “repeat” comes from the red “while” loop around the whole code. By saying “While still in the maze (a bunch of code) End” what that means is keep repeating that (bunch of code) until you’re not in the maze anymore. I should also point out that one piece of code I didn’t use was ELSE. “IF” means definitely do this if the specified condition is true. “ELSE IF” means do this if the specified condition is true AND the “IF” and “ELSE IF”s that came before were not true. “ELSE” means do this if everything above has failed (like my cereal and ice cream dinner fall back). “END” means this is the end of the “if” statement (or “while” or “for” loop).

Level 4: If your child tries the above code (or their corresponding similarly structured code) on all the mazes provided, they will likely find that the code does not work on all mazes. In some cases, because of the priority given to that left turn (or whatever priority their code uses), their character will get stuck going back and forth over the same path repeatedly (an infinite loop). To solve this problem without introducing more complicated concepts like storing variables, a random number generator can be used to remove the priority of one choice over another. For example, instead of saying “If I can turn left, turn left,” I could instead say, “If I can turn left, turn left half of the time.” Since we are not ACTUALLY using computers, instead of using a random number generator function, your kids can just use a dice roll instead. By introducing this randomness, the character may not follow the most logical path to get out of the maze, but he will not get stuck doing the same thing over and over and over again. Here is an example of one possible code that I *think* will work for any maze. It is not the only “right” answer and probably not the best answer. I discourage you from showing your child my answer before they give it a shot on their own. Coding is a process of trial and error. Lots of testing is almost always required before programmers come up with something new that works.

Don’t forget to check out all the amazing posts in the 28 Days of Hands-On STEM Activities for lots more ideas to get your kids interested in these wonderful fields! If you thought this post was useful, please consider subscribing to my newsletter (and receive access to exclusive, free, educational printables)!

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