If you’re like me, you like registering domains. It’s exciting. But what’s not exciting is watching your hosting company or domain registrar turn your name into an ad-farm while you’re getting ready to launch your next WordPress blog. If you didn’t know it, that’s called domain parking; a way for hosts and domain registrars to capitalize on all the underdeveloped domains out there. That’s why I came up with LaunchPad, the WordPress Domain Parking Theme. To explain: if this theme had a motto it might be, “I’m not your billboard.”
Now with most hosts offering one-click installs of WordPress it couldn’t be easier to park your domain in style while you get your future blog ready. Just install WordPress, sign up for FeedBurner with email subscriptions (see instructions below) and you’re set! You get a professionally designed domain parking page—for free—that serves up an RSS feed link and a form for email updates.
But why bother? Well, let’s see what web design expert Mr. Meltdown, of Design Meltdown, thinks of “coming soon” pages like LaunchPad.
This type of landing page has dropped the annoying construction cones and replaced with relevant and useful features. Namely among this is a sign up form to be notified of an actual launch, beta release, or other significant milestone. And of course this is a great way to build a nice mailing list of people to market a new product to. After all, if they actually complete the form they are likely to be very interested. Link.
Sounds like a good idea to me!
LaunchPad Features
- Theme Options Page
- Integration with FeedBurner
- Professional design and typesetting
- GPL Licensed—it’s free and you’re free to mess with it.
LaunchPad Instructions
Using LaunchPad is simple, it installs like any other WordPress theme, but there’s a couple of things you’ll need to get ready beforehand.
Get a FeedBurner ID and Feedmail
For a theme that incorporates FeedBurner to build subscriptions before you’ve even started blogging, this one is necessary. Signing up for FeedBurner is easy and you were probably going to do it anyway. Visit FeedBurner.com and follow the instructions there. Once that’s done, login and visit your account page.
All you’ll need is the name of your FeedBurner feed address. That’s the text after “http://feeds2.feedburner.com/”. Copy it into a text file somewhere for easy reference.
While you’re here, sign up for Feedmail. Click the publicize tab and look for the Email Subscriptions link under services (as I write this, it’s the 4th item). Follow the setup instructions there—but don’t worry about pasting any code anywhere, LaunchPad does that all for you.
Credit has to go to Nathan Rice for showing me how to do this with his beautiful theme Elegant Blue. Thanks, Nathan!
Write your Welcome Post
When someone subscribes to your new blog with RSS they will be able to read any published posts. You don’t want them reading your “Hello World!” post. Write a simple introduction to your new blog that outlines it’s genesis and your goals so your new subscribers will have something to read.
Set Theme Options
Simply copy your feed name into the options page …
… and You’re Done! You’re ready to launch your blog with LaunchPad!
Tips for Launching Your WordPress Blog with LaunchPad
There is really only one crucial tip for making the most of LaunchPad: let people know you have a URL. WordPress themes don’t work magic. You still have to market yourself. I recommend doing it in stages. First let your immediate friends and family know, then send out word on any social sites (like Facebook, LinkedIn, Hello Kitty Fan Club, etc.) you’re a member of. Follow that up with a link on an existing blog—if you have one. If you don’t have a blog I recommend getting one—using LaunchPad while you’re getting it ready of course!
Speaking of getting ready, make sure you read Collis Ta’eed’s two part Building a SuperBlog series on NorthXEast (Part two is here). It outlines the steps Collis took when launching FreelanceSwitch and his advice will help anyone launch their blog successfully. Without my LaunchPad theme, even. Imagine!
View the live demo or download.
ThemeShaper 
341 responses
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Great tool. many thanks. I do have one question/ addition, though. Is there a way to further customize the email subscription screens for Feedburner? Now when you subscribe to my feed using Launchpad, I get the ugly blue/ standard message (and following confirmations from feed burner. Can I possibly change the text/ colors/ message of these? and how? it would be a great improvement to this great tool.
Thanks again and keep them coming
Ed, FeedBurner has some options for email styling under “email branding”. Look at the left sidebar under “email subscriptions” when you’re on the “email subscriptions” page.
Thanks Ian, I already checked it out, and it works OK…. though not as slick as LaunchPad (sigh!)
[…] Get LaunchPad » […]
Great idea
Lovely idea, lovely theme! Thanks!
The LaunchPad WordPress Theme As A Hipster Domain Holding Page…
I haven’t made much progress in deciding on what to use as a hipster domain holding page system since I last wrote on the subject. In short, that’s some kind of page to use as a placeholder on all of those oh-so-clever URLs you’re sto…
[…] good response. Many of the comments actually pointed me to an existing WordPress theme known as LaunchPad, which the author advertises as a parked […]
[…] is a rather unique theme created by Ian Stewart of ThemeShaper called LauchPad. The idea is simple. You have just registered a new domain but you’re not quite ready to set […]
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Any other theme like this then? Beautiful – Simple and Elegant!!!
[…] oplossing bestaat uit twee stappen die ik met je zal doorlopen. Als eerste download je het Launchpad Theme van Themeshaper. Deze theme ga je uploaden naar de betreffende themes map in je WordPress installatie met je […]
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[…] LaunchPad Domain Parking Theme- An easy way to park your site while it’s still underdeveloped. The main feature is to allow visitors subscribe through RSS and e-mail. […]
[…] LaunchPad Domain Parking Theme- An easy way to park your site while it’s still underdeveloped. The main feature is to allow visitors subscribe through RSS and e-mail. […]
Thank you for the nice Theme! Very good to get started.
So i have set up launchpad on my domain and set up feedburner, well i think i have correctly.
But with my feed its the generic feeburner welcome post. How do i start writing feeds from wordpress to automatically update feedburner.
Im stuck and yes im new to all this any help would be appriciated
It takes a while before FeedBurner updates. As long as you followed the instructions in the post you should be fine, Joe.
Me again, so i’m checking feedburner and the original feed is coming from wordpress http://www.mywebsite.co.uk/wp-rss2.php and when i go into my main account at feedburner and view my rss feed is shows correctly the feed from wordpress but when i actually go to my website and view the feed from the button on the parking page it still shows as the feedburner default welcome messgage?
Will this change in time or if there something i may be missing? I am concerned as i have already started getting subcribers even before i started writing my feeds so i want people who click the rss feed button to start seeing my posts from wordpress with the updates on how the website is going, thanks.
scratch my last comment, i finally found out what i was doing wrong, i was giving it the wrong feedburner address in my settings, i feel so stupid thanks for your help especially Ian thanks for a quick reply 🙂
@ Joe: people will be able to read your posts via their feedreader. Not via the WordPress blog using the Launchpad theme. As soon as your definite theme is up, people will be able to view your posts just like on any other blog. For instance mine 🙂
*lol* .. scratch mine too then 😉
Post-scratch-fever!
I thought you might like to see how I’ve used your theme. I’ve recently moved my blog to a new home and I’ve used your theme to handle the re-direct.
http://blog.yourwish.co.nz/
After a little customisation, it works perfectly!
Thanks
Very nice update, Dawn. Thanks for letting me know about it.
Errr, derrrrrrrrrrr, how are we sposed to download it ?
I’ve highlighted the download link.
[…] moins terminé, il fallait alors faire le passage de version ici. J’ai donc mis en place le Launchpad qui est une sorte de thème “de maintenance” très réussit puisqu’il permet une […]
Thanks for the great theme! Just what I need while I wait to relaunch my site!
You’re welcome, Tommy.
Here’s a good alternative if you don’t want to use WP:
http://LaunchSoon.com
You can also check out some cool designs from the gallery:
http://launchsoon.com/gallery.php
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[…] LaunchPad, The WordPress Domain Parking Theme […]
[…] domain anda daripada menjadi Domain Parking kepada suatu laman yang berguna dengan menggunakan tema LaunchPad yang perlu digunakan bersama WordPress. Untuk memasang WordPress, anda boleh login ke cPanel dan […]
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[…] Suppose you see some big shopping mall near your locality, you will not see it directly built and opened, there will be boards and advertisements already before it is built, and these boards show “Opening shortly – A great shoppi…”, this actually gets some good talks and people already talk about it and keep in mind to give a visit there in future when it is built. The same is with some big companies which try to launch their online ventures. First they keep the site under construction and prefer to show the visitors how good the launch is going to be. Its now easy for the company blogs, when you will see this theme called the LaunchPad wordpress theme. […]
Thanks
Cool template found….
i will definitely try this latter on…
thanks for sharing
It’s cool!
Thanks 4 theme, I like it very much!
[…] Demo […]
[…] som heter LaunchPad SE, en översättning av Ian Stewarts utmärkta (men ack så engelska) LaunchPad, för kommande bloggar som man gärna vill kunna länka ett tag innan lanseringen. Jag gjorde […]
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[…] LaunchPad Domain Parking Theme […]
[…] LaunchPad Domain Parking Theme […]
Great theme. However, Feedburner seems to have an issue with validation. (my host is in germany). Anybody else have that issue? Cant generate the feed with out validation.
“It looks like this is a web page, not a feed. I looked for a feed associated with this page, but couldn’t find one. Please enter the address of your feed to validate.”
Thanks
Weird. I’d check the Feedburner Forums. If it turns out to be some weird problem with LaunchPad, let me know.