After writing my post yesterday, I added tags. After adding tags, I checked the tags I had added. One of those tags was "website project". The thing with it was, that I talked about not knowing the name because I didn't have a domain in one post and then the next post with the tag I briefly mention having had the domain for the project for some time now. I felt this needed some explanation, so this is how this post got to be.
First off, let me confirm that using the same tag was because this is about the very same project. So, the two stories are actually contradicting. However, upon closer inspection one can see how this was possible. The thing is, the two posts were made with almost two years between them. So, I'm not really here to resolve some contradicting posts, I am here to fill in some of the gaps.
So, to get the story complete I need to start quite a bit before I made that first post. You see, I have walked around with the idea for this project for quite some time now. I think the first idea for the website was somewhere in 2008 or 2009.
Over the years the ideas have fleshed themselves out a lot, but the principals are the same and they are still the thing that make the website. One of the things I did early on was - obviously - to think about a name for the project. However, I wanted a name that could be represented by a domain name, clearly it had to be one that didn't have an owner yet. While in my early concepts the original focus of the website was much stronger (right now, it's more like the first component I will be building with a clear intention to build more components from the start) I already knew that I wanted to at least be able to go beyond that original focus, so I needed a name and a matching domain that was able to do the same. It took me a while, but in the end I came up with a name that I liked. Its .net domain wasn't owned by anyone yet, so that was a possibility as well.
Nevertheless, I didn't act on buying the domain, but instead just shelved the project to be retrieved on a later date. This was clearly a mistake, considering we are now going to flash forward to 2010, when I wrote that post and we already know the gist of what problem I had at that point. Obviously, by that time someone had bought the domain. At first, I tried to come up with a new name. Unfortunately, I was unable to come up with anything that I liked anywhere near as much as the name I had previously.
Then, I looked into buying domains for the original name. I also inquired about the .com equivalent of the domain, but that was owned by a stupid company while focusing on selling domains, didn't have any price categories mentioned and didn't respond to my email. When I then made an international call about this, I finally got to hear an opening bid. That was all I wanted to know, and I told them that if that was the opening bid, I didn't much care for haggling, as they clearly weren't going to go quite as low as I could afford. Nevertheless, the company sent my emails for years whenever they had a 20% discount, despite the fact that I needed more like a 99% discount to be interested and they should have known this. I replied a couple of times about how preposterous them sending me such emails was, but they kept sending me those email. I should add that I haven't seen any of the kind lately, so probably they finally have stopped, but this took way too long.
I decided I really wanted either the .net or the .com domain and didn't really want any alternatives. This meant that with the .com out of the picture, I just had the .net to look into. The thing was that it was used only for advertisement purposes and it didn't look to be doing too well as such. I also found a listing on a site that could be use to discuss selling domain names and estimated that it was going to cost me about $100 to get the domain. It was an acceptable price for this domain and that if I was serious about this project, I would just have to pay up. However, in the end I ended up shelving the project again instead of inquiring about the price of the domain. I am glad I never contacted him, as that could have changed things from the way they turned out.
We flash forward again to last summer. I was starting up Project CoreBot and as such, I needed to buy a domain for it. Out of sheer interest I looked up the status of the .net for the web project. It turned out this was a good thing, considering it no longer had an owner. Not wanting to repeat the sequence of events from before and realizing how little it would cost me this time, I just bought the domain this time. I didn't have much time for the project as I was working on Project CoreBot, but I didn't care. I just wanted to have the domain in my possession so nothing could go wrong again and then I would make a simple front page for the website some time. I never ended up making that front page.
Until now, that is. It all started with a random moment when I grabbed a permanent marker and starting doodling with it. What I ended up with was the naming (/"logo") scheme I talked about last time. This was without my first doodles even being about the project. These events are what basically unshelved the project for me. I then started working on finally making that front page, but as I mentioned last time, I wanted to do so with a bit of a look into the future. I am not planning to do much more work on the project at the moment, but for now, I have made some big steps and I still believe that this website is going to exist one day. What's more, I think when it is going to, I think it's going to be a popular website at that. It most definitely has the potential.
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