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Ben Halpern
Ben Halpern

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What domain names are you holding on to?

Whether or not you are making any use of them...

Top comments (51)

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sm0ke profile image
Sm0ke • Edited

app-generator.dev/ -> used to migrate AppSeed.us in the future.
invat.eu - means I learn in Romanian
πŸš€πŸš€

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polterguy profile image
Thomas Hansen

Najs one, my company - I assume we're in the same business :)

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sm0ke profile image
Sm0ke

Nice tool. You got a new GH * and folower.
πŸš€πŸš€

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polterguy profile image
Thomas Hansen

Thx mate, following back :)

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sherrydays profile image
Sherry Day

If I tell you you'll steal my ideas!

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sm0ke profile image
Sm0ke • Edited

funny

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thesameeric profile image
Eric O Okiti

very funny

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nathanielrand profile image
Nathaniel Rand

so very funny

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diballesteros profile image
Diego (Relatable Code)

Came in here to comment this. Everyone's watching!

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Jackson Kasi

haha🀣🀣🀣✌πŸ”₯

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GrahamTheDev • Edited

I have 3 that I currently have that are worth mentioning, 2 of which I don't use at the moment πŸ€¦β€β™‚οΈ:

a2z.dev

I have been building this for a few weeks, it will be my personal blog plus a load of resources. Currently unused a2z.dev

How this was available I have no idea, it seems like a prime domain name for any developer resource!


milliondollarkey.com

I bought this on a whim, still no idea what to do with it lol.

The only reason I bought it is that it is part of the million dollar homepage, a little bit of internet history!

I wrote about it here (for those of you not old enough to know what the million dollar homepage was all about):


πŸ‘¨β€πŸ’»πŸ‘©β€πŸ’».to

This was a silly one!

I bought it to point to my dev.to profile! It actually works - copy this into your URL bar: πŸ‘©β€πŸ’»πŸ‘¨β€πŸ’».to

πŸ‘©β€πŸ’»πŸ‘¨β€πŸ’».to

And obviously, I wrote about that too:

If you want to see hundreds of random domain names people own

I did a silly post where I asked people to share their random domain names and I would come up with a purpose for them.

It was a really fun thing to do (and I even think I nailed it on a couple of them) and some of the things people bought are hilarious!:

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zippytyro profile image
Shashwat Verma • Edited

Cool one lol. How do I link my post with markdown like this?

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grahamthedev profile image
GrahamTheDev • Edited

It is {% post then the link of your article and then close it with %}

Search Google for β€œeditor guide dev.to” and it has all of the β€œliquid tags” you can use there πŸ‘

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polterguy profile image
Thomas Hansen

Hahaha, amazing :D

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Dennis Persson

Recently updated my personal page to a blog. Got .com domain and the Swedish .se domain.

Then I newly released some other domain I kept for future use and for my NAS.

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ericbae profile image
Eric Bae

I'm a bit of a domain junky... I've purchased ~60 domains over the past few years. I know it's not as big as some serious professional domainers, but I bought them thinking that they will become one day.. you know.. unicorns.. 😎 they are more like... donkeys at the moment.. if at all.

But! I did have an idea about a year ago where I didn't want these domains to go unused and idle. I also didn't have time to develop and maintain them, so I created a little tool called Newsy.

newsy.co

It turns your unused domain names into a content aggregator automatically. It self-updates, self-maintains and self-runs! Over the last few months, I've added quite a few features like membership, voting features, SSL, monetization etc.

If anyone is interested, I'd happy for you to try it out!

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hoffmann profile image
Peter Hoffmann • Edited

So there are two that I think are particular interesting:
destroy-club.de was my Counter Strike clan that is no longer active (for more than 20 years now?) I just have the name and can't let go.
gruppensexpornos.eu one the other hand (apologies for whom the name is offensive) has a more interesting story: In Germany in general you have freedom of speech but there are some limits to pay attention to. The "Bundeszentrale fΓΌr Kinder- und Jugendmedienschutz" (until 2003 BundesprΓΌfstelle fΓΌr jugendgefΓ€hrdende Medien: Federal Review Board for Media Harmful to Minors, there was no update on the english name) is in charge of checking all media for content inappropriate for minors. For "telemedia" (homepages) the "Index" is by law confidential and only hashes of the domain names are distributed to institutions in charge of filters, mostly search engines like Google and Bing but also manufacturers of home routers. If your domain is on that Index it will not appear in internet searches - independent from your age. But in 2014 the current list was published and reverse engineered anyways. Of that ~3000 URLs that where resolved only 50-60% still contained unsuitable content like pornographie, animal or child abuse, suicide or anorexia advocacy and glorification of national socialism. So yes, there is dangerous and sordid content on the internet, no one would/should deny that.
To get on the index there is a very bureaucratic review process. But once on that list you will stay there for 25 years. You can take actions in court against that decision but this might be expensive and takes time. For the operators of such (especially porn) domains the names abruptly lose their value (and they will notice due to the drop in traffic) and will discarded them instantly. Probably they'll be replaced by another domain with a slightly different name containing the exact same content only a few days later, keeping the review board bussy. A perfect real world Whac-A-Mole game.
One day I grabbed myself one of such dirty domains once containing unsuitable images and videos as a silent protest and example of how helpless and absurd this blockading is. The block on my domain is now a shallow cocoon around a now perfectly boring empty space that will stay a hidden corner of the internet for the foreseeable future. If you can search for that domain outside of Germany or the EU is a question not answered yet. If you want to check, search for the Regennassetagtraumruine (a word currently only used on this page in the internet).

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Daniel Sitnik

Searching from Brazil, the word "Regennassetagtraumruine" now shows a search result linking to this post. πŸ˜‚

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zakwillis profile image
zakwillis

Hi Ben.

cryptostatto.com - it will be a cryptocurrency analytics platform, but with a very different perspective on how the YouTubers market their stuff (not hating). Certainly, this is an exciting effort, but only so many hours in the day.

My web data platform has launched my Limited Company website Info Rhino and property platform findigl. The underlying tech can deliver a cryptocurrency metrics platform too.

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Jakub T. Jankiewicz

The best generic one that I can share is hacking.cafe. I also have cool generic Polish domain just.net.pl and ale.marketing (ale is Polish WoW or But).

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millsoft profile image
Michael M

I used to have a company and I registered a domain in 1999. Sentimental reasons or probably a hidden hope that it might resurrect one day. I am also holding it because of SEO, back then google liked old domains, not sure nowadays.

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Daniel Sitnik

I have registered covid.gripe.

I am brazilian and "gripe" is the portuguese word for "flu", so it makes sense when you think about it in portuguese.

I initially planned to host a dashboard with Covid data there, but there were already hundreds of them around the internet and I got lazy. Currently I'm just holding on to the domain with nothing planned for it.

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dhravya profile image
Dhravya

I was almost gonna buy epic.games

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lexplt profile image
Alexandre Plt

I'm currently holding a few, such as

  • superfola.tech for my portfolio ;
  • arkscript-lang.dev for a language of a the same name ;
  • 12f.pl to do absurd things with DNS (sending custom DNS answers) and hosting personal services

I might or might not buy another one for OnlyCheese, an Instagram/OnlyFans joke

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Isaac Lyman

I've been holding onto qg2.work. The original idea was to let people fill out a small form and then generate a 1-page "quick guide to working with me," which would include a name or nickname, pronouns, preferred communication style, an "ask me about" list of expertise, and any workplace accommodations or collaboration pointers you want to disclose. You could generate one whenever you're working with a new company/team/coworker and hand it out so people know how to work most effectively with you.

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Pontakorn Paesaeng

pontakorn.dev I just take the entire domain so there will be only one Pontakorn with this domain.

It would be hilarious if someone with the same name was also a developer tried to use this domain name.

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theaccordance profile image
Joe Mainwaring • Edited

Personally, I’m sitting on about a dozen domains. Most are either variations on my name or pseudonyms, but I also have a couple additional for things like my home and past products I’ve taken to market.

On the corporate side, I have dozens related to our past and present branding. We only us a small fraction of the total domains, but I purchase the extra domains partly to defend against phishing, and in part to reserve domains should we expand our footprint - say for example, implementing an EU-specific application to meet data residency requirements