I've spoken before about grappling with Platinax as a name and potential brand:
http://www.platinax.co.uk/forum/5614...-platinax.html
One the one hand, you can't sit back and expect a brand to be built, and one of my failings so far with Platinax is that I haven't put anywhere near the amount of energy into it that's required.
The big problem, though, I think is the name. Much as I really like the name "Platinax" I don't think it's communicable - I always have to spell it out on the phone, and even then, people are often uncertain of how to pronounce it.
So once I was absolutely certain that I didn't want to keep Platinax, I looked for alternatives - my favourite was InternetBusiness.co.uk, because everything we do here is pretty much for internet-based businesses.
So I put in an offer, and bought it for nearly £9,000.
It seems like an awful lot of money - and it is - but I'm looking to the future of 5-10 years, and want to bring this site forward with a brandable name and energy that will easily justify the investment.
I'm just about to post out the Nominet transfer forms to confirm ownership, and though there is no immediate timescale in place for moving to the new domain, I do have the following plans:
1. Frontend: Recreate the main discussion topic areas on the front end of the site, and run a community news blog, covering business and internet news, not simply from normal media, but also the blogosphere.
2. Forums: remove subheading forums and bring all their content into the main headings. There's no need for these, and I think removing them will increase usability. I'll also set up the forums in a subdomain, to avoid clashes with mod rewrite rules on the main domain.
3. Directory: also move to a subdomain to avoid mod_rewrite conflicts, and also try and push more usability into them. Will probably also raise the price and make this an annual fee in time, because the directory should offer a quality user experience. It also escaped the cull that hit most of the other webmaster directories, and I think it's survival depends crucially on being user focused.
4. News & Blog: These will be merged together to form the front end, and once some steam has developed, get it syndicated again in Google News.
5. Design: Of course, look to redesign the site, though this will probably be more aesthetic than any major structural changes to the look.
Anyway, plans as I have them so far...