For me, a project always starts with a name.

A name of some sort, whether it be a title, headline, or a domain name, before I could start doing work. The name didn’t always have to be final, but I needed some name to start with.

I don’t know if this is a bad habit or a good habit, but these days, it seems like a useful habit, at very least. I never start a new project without a name and a corresponding domain name.

I can think back to the mid-90s, when I first started using the internet and designing websites, I had the chance to register melissa.com. But being that I was only 10 or 11 years old at the time, I decided it was far cooler to have a domain name that used my handle at the time, so I registered melissa976.com. Big mistake, it would seem. Well, they do say that hindsight is always 20/20.

I like to believe I’ve made up for that gaffe with the purchase of awesome domains like gee.ky, which, in the circles I run in, is just about as cool as you can get with a domain name. But either way, I’ve certainly learned my lesson. I always check to see if the domain name is free before I choose a name. And oftentimes, I buy several domains before I actually settle on a name.

Currently, I own over 20 domain names. Seems like a lot. But thinking back to the domains that I’ve let expire over the past few years, that number would probably be more like 40.

I’m not the only one, either. A quick poll on Twitter last week, and I realized that my friends own anywhere from 1 to nearly 100 domain names. Wow.

Cliff Spradlin is a friend of mine, with whom I work on nearly every project. Since I’m rather preoccupied (read: obsessed) with domain names, I usually end up being the one who purchases them for our projects.

Recently though, when I was about to register a new one, Cliff said to me, “Hey, you’ve bought the last several domain names. Let me get this one.”

Making it seem as if it was as commonplace as a round of beers. Nice.

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