I got an email today from a certain children’s pastor that (in the words of Run DMC) goes a little something like this:
I know absolutely nothing about blogs, the lingo, the programs – nada! So I here you are the one to talk to about all that stuff! YAY! (for me – not you!)
I am trying to start a blog on wordpress for kids and wondered if you had any good picture sites that you use or seen with kids pics, also if you choose a theme when you first start if you can change colours and other things. I am used to publisher and I want to do all that stuff to at least look a little kid friendly!
Any suggestions, ideas you could give would be very appreciated.
Now I’ve helped with a couple of suggestions, but I figure that if I’ve still got any blog readers left, it would make sense to offer their trusty assistance. So hit it – what advice would you give this poor helpless newbie.
Tell her to have a chat with me perhaps. Unless she wants to do it herself (likely) in which case google image search…. how helpful.
Leaving aside the problem of finding a kid who looks cute but not sickly, your big issue will be IP/copyright issues.
Applying the highest standard, as I feel led in ministry things, that means NOT stealing images from google image search, flickr, photobucket et al.
Which means you’re down to public domain images (and you’d want to check the licensing agreement there) or stock photography.
For stock, I like http://www.bigstockphoto.com/
It’s kind of a pro-am photographers’ market: you can get screen res pics for about US$1 each: print versions are double – waaaaay cheaper than outright commercial stock.
For PD gear, check out http://pdphoto.org/
OR you find someone in the congregation who’s willing and able to take pics, and you start preaching to the church about having the right heart, and then ask the parents to sign consent forms for their kids to go up online.
Then you reverse all the pics before you use them so the kids don’t look like themselves anymore. Just to make sure.
Oh, and read up on the privacy act first!
Here’s a list of sites that offer free stock photos:
http://pstutorialsblog.com/?p=44
Better than using Google images for IP/copyright issues as mentioned previously.
Also, for general clipart… http://www.openclipart.org/ is quite good.
does she want kids actually in the images? Or just ‘kid friendly’ images?