When you register a new domain, it’s important to gauge its traffic for yourself — don’t rely on others’ estimates or statistics. Also, you don’t want it resolving to an auto-parked page with your registrar. Oh, and you want some content there for the accidental visitor and the Google bot to see.
Whew! That’s a lot to do! Not really… once you’ve got the templates created and done the routine one time, you’ll find it’s really not that hard. Here are the steps I made for the recently registered “AdobeArt.com - Adobe Style Art for Your House and Home”:
Step 1: Switch nameservers to YOUR hosting
There is NO sin greater than keeping a new domain at the registrar’s auto parked page. This earns them money while doing NOTHING for you… no sales leads, no PPC, no Google love, NOTHING!
Step 2: Get a free CSS/HTML Template
We’ll be creating a simple HTML/CSS landing page. I found some at intensivstation.ch and downloaded the “fixed box centered” template. Fix up the HTML title and any META content you want in there for index food.
Step 3: Get Content!
Since I didn’t have any real content yet, I at least wanted to let people know that there would be soon. And what better way to let them know than having them sign-up for an email newsletter or alert? So, at a minimum you need a Form and Code to send an email to YOU with the user’s contact information.
I took a quick look over at WidgetBox.com and found one that would do the job. Using THAT widget has some disadvantages though … what I marketing lesson I got, and some good ideas too 
Instead, I opted to use Wordpress and the cForms plugin to accomplish the same thing. cForms is incredibly configurable, and I was able to create a Wordpress page template that included nothing but the basic header content and the page content.
Once you’ve got the page template created and uploaded to your theme folder, you can create a New Wordpress Page that uses that template. The new page can have anything you like, but I included ONLY the new Form I created to gather the user’s name and email (and captcha for a little added security).
Next on to the index.html page. Instead of including the WidgetBox.com code, I include an IFRAME pointing to that new Wordpress page containing the form. This way I can use my NEW domain and not the domain the form-widget is coming from. And… Viola!
You can see the end result here at AdobeArt.com. The look is from one of the many available cForms styles and the logo at the top was generated a the ACME Label Maker site.
Step 4: Include Your Tracking Code
Don’t forget to include your tracking code in the index.html page. You’ll be checking… oh, every 3 minutes too see if anyone came by…
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