Not long ago, Ilira Steinman was searching for an activity to do with her restless, rambunctious 20-month-old son. At Kidoinfo.com, a Web site that offers resources to parents and caregivers of young children in greater Providence, Steinman struck gold: Cranston’s Stadium Elementary School was holding its first “Touch-A-Truck” event, at which children could climb aboard vehicles that included a fire truck, dump truck, tractor trailer, and even a helicopter.

“I took my son to that and, my God, I think I was just the hero of a lifetime,” said Steinman, a Pawtucket mother of two. “It was just a wonderful way to bond with him, he was so excited, and I never would have known about it.”

In its one year of existence, Kidoinfo.com is quickly gaining Web visitors as parents throughout Rhode Island spread word of the site, said Anisa Raoof, the Web site’s founder, editor-in-chief and creative director. Kidoinfo.com is currently averaging about 500 visitors a day, but that number goes up monthly, she said.

The Web site provides a daily calendar of children’s events and activities throughout the Providence area, and a message board where parents share recommendations for schools, classes, playgrounds, books and music.

Raoof blogs from Monday to Friday on topics that have included where to eat out with kids, the best sledding hills, how to choose a baby carrier and creative, do-it-yourself craft projects.

On Thursdays, she sends a popular e-newsletter that lists family-friendly events and activities occurring throughout the weekend.

About 12 contributors write monthly columns and articles for the site, including administrators from the Providence Children’s Museum, the Rhode Island School of Design Art Museum, the Audubon Society of Rhode Island, a pediatric nutritionist and local children’s author and storyteller Mark Binder.

The advertising-supported Web business is not making money yet, Raoof said. She is currently launching a marketing campaign to build the Kidoinfo.com brand, and plans to outsource advertising to a vendor in about six months.

But a handful of local preschools, preparatory schools and retailers that have contacted Raoof to request ad space on Kidoinfo.com already advertise on the site.

“People are coming out of the woodwork who have businesses or classes offered for kids that didn’t really have a place where they could promote yoga for kids or moms,” she said. “They didn’t know where to advertise before.”

Down the road, Raoof envisions growing the business by establishing similar Web sites in other cities, or perhaps in neighborhoods with lots of young families in larger cities.

Raoof, a mother of 6-year-old, twin boys who lives on the East Side of Providence, formerly worked as an artist, graphic and product designer and a co-director of the Providence Craft Fair. She started Kidoinfo.com at the urging of friends, with whom she had developed a reputation as the person at the playground or the school fence who always knew a fun place to take the kids next.

“I’d come to be known as the person who always knows what’s going on for kids and activities,” she said. “So I just realized that I could use that, and polled a bunch of friends and parents for what would be useful information.”

Raoof designed the Web site herself, and her husband – who works at APC-MGE – did the programming. She launched Kidoinfo.com in March 2007 with a low-budget marketing campaign that consisted of sending postcards and e-mails to friends and parents at her sons’ preschool. •