I did this once before using instantdomainsearch.com to see what domain names were available. Ironically the entire .com .net and .org blocks for two domain names were available. The former, virtualrope I passed on as I had no idea what to do with it (and it sounded stupid anyway), but the other - minimalmarkup was a real gem that I registered PDQ just to keep others from registering them. Too bad I haven't settled on a design for the site yet though.

Anyway, have you thought about registering wireframes.org by any chance Christian, or are you going to let it pass for someone else to register (and hopefully develop into something useful for the community and industry as a whole)?

It's really sad to see such good domain names go to waste.
Too bad it's not possible to enforce the owners of a parked domain to put up a site within X amount of time.

Nice research BTW.

Christian,

I can't believe that 80% of domains are parked! thats crazy but true I'm sure. I had a domain name bavington.com (bavington is my surname) and I forgot to renew it.

By the time I had realised, it was too late, and some domain parking company has snapped it up, and don't respond to my email pleas to have it back!

I think the reason that some many domains get bought and parked is the software that some people have to buy domain names when they expire. As a web designer, I see that going on quite a lot.

Especially when the domain names have Pageranks!

it is a real shame on the pure amount of parked domains out there, you heard of this going on a few years ago so people could supposedly sell these on at a profit though that doesn't seam to happen much any more as people are getting more imaginative at making site names up and users are also getting to grips with stranger and stranger names, besides how many times a day do you actually type a URL anymore, maybe 2 or 3 times for me!

You sound bored!!

webdesign.co.uk exists on the second page for the search 'web design'. my i would like to get my hands on a domain like that.

Yes, I think there are a lot of people buying up domain names in the hope there will be another big internet bubble they will be able to make their fortune. But with so many extensions now I don't think there will be as big a market for the domains as there once was.

I do not think there is anything more disappointing to a client than to strike up a dialog with us about the greatest web design ever and then have their dreams smashed when we check the URL that was going to make their site and find that it is parked. This is even more aggravating when the owner is unwilling to sell or wants more than the client can afford. I agree with Benjamin, it would be great if the hosting companies united and implemented a rule structure that required a site to have content up within a given time period. I would also be happy if they established a minimum traffic number and then required all parked pages to meet or exceed they minimum otherwise the domain would be released.

I noticed you said that webdesign.org is a parked domain! I happen to know that to be untrue. Webdesign.org is a great site for articles related to web design, graphic design, web development and other great things! It's an awesome site, you ought to check it out.

Kind of many parked domains out there...maybe we can buy them...hmm

usability.com used to be the site of a consulting company The Usability Group headed by Jeff Rubin (who wrote The Handbook of Usability Testing. The company is no longer in business and I think the domain was for sale at one point.

Last I heard they were thinking of turning it into a usability resource site. I agree though, it's a waste of a perfectly good domain name.

At this point, nearly all of the websites we build at Savings4All.com utilize either Wordpress or Drupal. Sure, we build custom applications on occasion and sometimes do Flash work that really doesn’t fit in a Content Management System.

Both are fantastic open source blogging platforms/content management systems with robust user communities. Both systems have their strengths and weaknesses. They are great alternatives to closed, paid platforms and much more cost effective than custom builds. As a web development shop, using Drupal and/or Wordpress allows us to focus our energies on design and strategy as opposed to reinventing the content management wheel.

After implementing a variety sites using both Wordpress and Drupal over the years, we’ve sort of developed our own unwritten rules as to when to use each platform.

Single Person / Group Blog (Use Wordpress)

If you are building a straight on single person or group blog, I think Wordpress is the way to go. It has all the base functionality you need built in and a robust set of plug-ins if you need to add on. The admin interface is dead simple - anyone with basic computer knowledge can master it in a few minutes. The install of the software is also simple and the templating system is not difficult to master.

Anything you want to do in Wordpress, you can also do in Drupal. But Drupal is more complicated from a design/install perspective, and has tons of features you’d end up turning off/not using for something simple like this.

Blog Community (Use Drupal)

At a certain point your simple blog sort of crosses a line and becomes a blog community. Here are the things I look for:

• In some cases you are going to want people to navigate directly to an authors blog instead of the main page of the overall blog.
• Your blog has 10+ authors.
• There is the possibility that your commenters may themselves become contributors.

You can accomplish these goals by extending Wordpress. You can also use Wordpress Mu, which a community-version of Wordpress that we don’t think is quite ready for prime time. However, these kinds of sites are pretty much the reason Drupal exists. All the community-based features you need are available right away upon setup with little tinkering required.

A good example of a blog community is TechPresident, which we had nothing to do with building.

Blog Driven Website (Use Wordpress)

With its pages section and various plugins, Wordpress can be used as a full on Content Management System for blog-based websites. Lots of companies (including us) long ago abandoned the old fashioned press release and use blogs as their primary content delivery mechanism. Assuming your overall templating system on the site is pretty straight forward and you don’t have hundreds of pages, Wordpress works perfectly well for these types of sites.

Once again, Drupal can accomplish the same thing but it is a little more complicated to deal with and the admin interface is a little more complicated. It is sort of like driving a Ferrari in bumper to bumper traffic - you will get from point A to point B but you’d ultimately be better off weaving through traffic on a motorcycle.

The Washington Area Women’s Foundation is a good example of a Wordpress-based site that we built. In addition to having all the content editable through Wordpress, we also built a few databases as custom plug-ins.

Full Featured Website (Use Drupal)

At certain points, a site simply becomes too big for it to be sufficiently managed using Wordpress. If you find yourself bumping against any of the following scenarios, you should probably be using Drupal:

• If you have multiple dynamic content types (press releases, news articles, blog posts, etc.). Drupal is great at allowing you to create this stuff on the fly, with Wordpress you are hacking things together.
• If your site has more than a two template design structure (homepage and second levels).
• If you have numerous content blocks on the homepage or in sidebars that you will be editing frequently. Drupal’s block system is great at this kind of stuff.
• If you are trying to start small and expect your site to add tons of features/content moving forward.

We built a site for Monsanto Spain that uses Drupal as a full on Content Management System. This is a good example of this kind of website.

There are lots of wasted domains out there, but ultimately, a website is only as good as the content that exists on it. The name is only a bonus.

Sometimes that bonus might really help acording to SEO and position in search engines.

@Paul Adams: Not complete... ;)

The first step is to create a perfect domain-name. not only for a search engineen, but for the users, too.

Teh second step is the content, right :))

Ralph

As the web master for HTML.COM, we are interested in providing some useful content. Ideas are appreciated as we don't have much in the way of immediate content to post. Thx.