The AboutUs.org domain lookup tool
May 29th, 2008 by Andreas from Xavier Media® in Domain names. Topics: HTML & The WebOn the 15th of May I wrote a post with some suggestions on how to improve the domain name wiki AboutUs.org and yesterday I noticed a ping-back from the AboutUs blog with a link to my post with suggestions. Guess what: They've actually followed one of my suggestions and created a plugin for your browser so you can look up domain names and web sites at AboutUs.org with just one click in your web browser 
.
To start looking up the sites you're visiting in the AboutUs wiki you simply just drag this link to your bookmark bar (if you're using Firefox that is):
—->> AboutUs <<—-
If you got IE you need to right click on the AboutUs link and select "Add to favorites".
Whenever you visit a site you would like to know more about, write some comments about or just want to have a look at what other people think you simply just click on the bookmark and you'll instantly be taken to the AboutUs page for the domain you're visiting
This is a good and handy tool, but it's not completely working without problems. If you for example visit www.xaviermedia.com and click on the bookmark you will be redirected to www.aboutus.org/xaviermedia.com (the page about xaviermedia.com). If you for example instead visit this blog (blog.xaviermedia.com) and click on the bookmark you get an error message instead of the page about xaviermedia.com 
This little tool is a good start, but they need to make it work with subdomains too because more and more sites are using subdomains for different content pages instead of directories.
Still with the little "subdomain bug" I'm going to award this tool 4 out of 5 possible X's for this innovative tool, fast work implementing it and for a good wiki Get it you too and don't forget to spread the word so we can build a much better community at AboutUs.org together.
BTW, don't forget to check out the page about XavierMedia.com when you have a few minutes to spare.
About the authorAndreas co-founded Xavier Media® in 1996 and has since been involved in all kinds of development, marketing and making money online.
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May 29th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
Hi there. To address your comment about subdomains…
Our page creation bot has always been unable to handle creating subdomains, so when the new browser plugin can't find the page, it's just because it doesn't exist yet (not that the tool has a bug). If you want to create a subdomain article however, you're more than welcome to with the Create Subdomain (http://www.aboutus.org/Create_Subdomain) tool we have on the site. Thanks for the thoughtful review!
Stevens last blog post..AboutUs.org Bookmarklet
May 29th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
@Steven: Thanks for the explanation. Maybe you should add some text about that on the Build Domain page. I don't think "You can create this page by filling out a from" is enough.
/Andreas
May 29th, 2008 at 8:51 pm
@Andreas: Agreed, the "how and why" of subdomains on AboutUs could use some more in depth explanation. Thanks again for the constructive commentary.
Stevens last blog post..AboutUs.org Bookmarklet
June 19th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
[...] time ago I wrote about the AboutUs widget for your web browser and as you remember I said that it was [...]