Meet Jerry Charles, a father of five, who combined his passion for website design and reading to create K12reader.com, a fantastic set of free resources that parents and teachers can use to help children learn to read and improve their reading comprehension.

“Our family has always enjoyed reading and back in 2008 I was also very interested in learning about web design,” says Jerry. “K12reader.com just seemed like a natural first project to start on. I started slow with really no expectations except to develop skills, do something fun that might benefit others, and possibly earn a little extra income. As I’ve learned about the kinds of financial pressures that schools and families are under, I’ve grown more enthusiastic about creating free, standards-based resources. That has helped continue to drive my passion for the site. The financial benefits alone could never hold my interest over time.”

K12reader.com features grammar worksheets on adjectives, adverbs, appositives, nouns, pronouns, punctuation, verbs, and more. There are lists of sight words and lists of award-winning books for children of all ages. The site’s articles, written by teachers, aim to reinforce the importance of reading and arm parents and educators with ideas and strategies to get kids reading and keep them interested in books. Jerry says that the comprehension worksheets, which ask kids to read a short passage and answer questions about what they read, are sought after.

“Overall the reading comprehension content is by far the most popular. We’re also in the process of classifying all content according to common core standards and expect this to be very popular with teachers and home school parents,” says Jerry.

When Jerry isn’t working on K12reader.com, he likes to read and enjoys listening to music.

“On the fiction side I enjoy Ted Dekker, James Rollins, and various mystery authors. I wish I could say I love the classics but I’m (ironically) pretty shallow when it comes to literature. I’ve learned more professionally from Seth Godin than any current business authors and find his books and daily emails very helpful. I’ve also tried to guide my web business philosophies based partially on principles I learned by reading Eric Ries’ material on lean startups. A couple other books that have influenced me include E-Myth by Michael Gerber and The Goal, by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. To me, process is probably more important than the idea. I also love a cross-section of music including Peter Gabriel, Rush, AC/DC, Avenged Sevenfold, Imogene Heap, Neil Young, and The Who. Oh, and I eventually hope to buy a custom Gibson Les Paul.”

K12reader.com, which has been running for four years, was born on WordPress.

“Since I’ve always worked on K12reader.com outside of my full-time jobs I’ve had to focus on creating a very streamlined process,” says Jerry. I discovered WordPress back in 2008 and found that it was a great solution that provided an easy way to build and maintain the site, allowing me to focus on content. I also use the Genesis theme framework and wpengine.com as managed host—both great decisions in my opinion if you want to scale your business reliably without hassle.

After investing upwards of a thousand hours working on content for K12reader.com, Jerry wanted to protect his investment. We’re thrilled he chose VaultPress to protect the site.

“As the site grew significantly in traffic, it became more and more important to avoid potential site problems. I also wanted to spend more time on content and less on maintenance. So, I looked for the most reliable solution for for back-ups. VaultPress seemed like the best solution from the ones I evaluated and since it was run by Automattic I knew that I could count on solid compatibility with WordPress upgrades, etc. It’s proven to be a great service.”

You can learn more about how VaultPress can protect your content, theme, plugin, and site settings and customizations. Contact us with questions, or you could make our day, and sign up to protect your site.