Delandtsheer and Doyen bounded, in terms of the block size, the number of points of a point-imprimitive, block-transitive 2-design. To do this they introduced two integer parameters, m and n, now called Delandtsheer--Doyen parameters, linking the block size with the parameters of an associated imprimitivity system on points. We show that the Delandtsheer--Doyen parameters provide upper bounds on the permutation ranks of the groups induced on the imprimitivity system and on a class of the system. We explore extreme cases where these bounds are attained, give a new construction for a family of designs achieving these bounds, and pose several open questions concerning the Delandtsheer--Doyen parameters.