Holy crap!?!

[KGIII]

I took this job: $100/month

Well, when adjusted for inflation, that's probably better than being in the old British Navy. There was also (probably), less buggery, rum, and lash.

I've been a guest on a windjammer and a schooner. Neither event was much longer than 8 hours. The first was just a lucky encounter where I hit it off with the owner. The latter is still owned by someone I know.

getting it back out of the lake took some doing

The canoe we lost was in deep water. I couldn't possibly find it again for recovery. If you do want to find and recover it, it was well stocked with a variety of alcoholic beverages. The outside of the bottles will be gross, but the contents may well have survived. It's somewhere between 30' and 80' down.

 

[Magrid0]

I was doing what we all do from time to time, sitting there looking through domain name options while hoping to find a winner. You want a nice and quirky domain, and all of the good ones are taken. This has you looking at the many hundreds of other domain names.

There are now 1,437 domains out there, from .com to .shop, and more...

I've had this idea of a simple site that just scrapes RSS feeds and posts them automatically. I might even add a discussion element to it -- but I'd have to be careful to not step on any toes over here.

So, I was expecting some crappy choices, like .ai, .ml, .fyi, etc...

I plunked in 'linuxnews'.

HOLY FLIP!

Someone just recently let linuxnews.org lapse, likely due to a lack of payment.

And, better, the domain snipers didn't get it. I didn't wait. I bought it immediately. I paid less than $10 USD for it.

Realizing what I'd potentially scored, I decided to do a WHOIS history and a check of Archive.org's Wayback Machine.

The domain name was first registered in the late 90s and has been consistently registered until just the other day. It went through the 30-day grace period and had officially expired. That meant that I could register it.

Just as it stands, it's likely worth a few hundred dollars.

More importantly, I have an iconic domain name with a history behind it. I could just flip it, or I could turn it into something.

It had been 'on the market' for less than a week when I stumbled across it. I'd already bought a domain name today, but I was bored.

Hmm... I wonder if I can do some sort of project that complements linux.org. I don't think it'd be right for me to add a Linux-themed forum there. My moral code prohibits doing so unless I really have a reason to do so. Any reason I could think of would just be something I addressed here, with the rest of the 'staff'. So, there won't be a forum. I could have comments, however. Something akin to a blog, but hopefully lighter.

Anyhow, I had to share my good fortune! I'm in the process of doing a much larger hosting business, so domain names are on my mind.

I don't know what to do with them all, but I do make sure to keep them automatically renewed. Sadly, this was not always the case and I've let some go that I probably should have held onto. Oh, well...

And, I don't have THAT many domain names. I think I have 36 or 37. There are people with portfolios that contain thousands of domain names. They can make a good living out of it.

Anyhow...

Does anyone have any suggestions about what I should do with the site?

wait so are you the one who made the linuxnews.net on this website’s sidebar? why .net and not .org?

 

[KGIII]

wait so are you the one who made the linuxnews.net on this website’s sidebar? why .net and not .org?

I am not that person.

 

[Magrid0]

I am not that person.

ah I thought it was you since it's basically the same website as the one you said you wanted to make

 

[KGIII]

ah I thought it was you since it's basically the same website as the one you said you wanted to make

It is indeed. I'll monetize the heck out of it, on the other hand.

Well, probably not...

But I figure I'll allow comments. That'll be the big difference. I might even bug Rob to get the source code and build it out from there. Or, maybe I'll scour GitHub to see if there's something that'll give me a head start.

 

[Magrid0]

It is indeed. I'll monetize the heck out of it, on the other hand.

Well, probably not...

But I figure I'll allow comments. That'll be the big difference. I might even bug Rob to get the source code and build it out from there. Or, maybe I'll scour GitHub to see if there's something that'll give me a head start.

If you eventually make it, please make it so that it display the full article, not like the current one that only display a tiny bit and then prompt you to go to the original website.

 

[KGIII]

If you eventually make it, please make it so that it display the full article, not like the current one that only display a tiny bit and then prompt you to go to the original website.

I'd only be using their RSS feeds. Writing a scraper would be too taxing for my meager PHP skills. Plus, it would potentially violate copyright if I copied the entire article.

I figure anything they publish with RSS is fair game. That's literally what RSS is for. So, that's what I'll limit it to.

A part of me wants to do it manually. Maybe five days a week would get a list of news articles, along with my commentary on them, and then be open to discussion. However, that's a good way to burn out.