Ask HN: Review my app: Search expired/available short domain names

[dotBen]

I like the idea but the source whois data seems quite inaccurate.

It said that digit.com and 6af.com were both free (which I obviously jumped on) but turns out they are actually registered and not due to expire for some time.

[jcrocholl]

I understand that's annoying, and hope to improve it. The system reports digit.com free because it doesn't have an A record, but I will fix this by checking SOA records in the future. I'm not sure why 6af.com is reported free, maybe there was a temporary DNS problem when I checked it. It should be updated in a couple of days.

[GavinB]

This is very cool. TheMargarine.com is available--startup millions, here I come!

Edit: Seriously, great work. Have bookmarked and will be back for my next domain search.

[mikexstudios]

Wow, this is very cool and elegant. I really like how the UI is simplistic and functional. Thank you for making it open source too.

One small idea might be to add slider bars to adjust the weights. That way, one can drag these sliders and see the rankings update on the fly. Maybe these bars (vertical?) can be displayed next to the textbox when user clicks in the textbox. Or maybe you can place the bars (horizontal) in the right column where you currently have feedback.

Additional cool features might be the ability to "watch"/receive notifications for new domain names that satisfy specified weights. Maybe automatically tweet the user or implement it as an RSS feed.

[jdietrich]

Great tool. I have one minor criticism - the domain availability seems to be just inaccurate enough to be annoying. The first few domains that caught my eye appeared to be free but were actually taken.

[cmelbye]

Somewhat off the main topic: I really like the feedback form, very elegant and to the point. I think Dropbox does something similar for their feedback. I might try something like that in my app.

[secos]

Went back and looked at the page. I agree, its very elegant and to the point. Good job!

[nicpottier]

Very cool, as someone who has been searching for domains recently I can really appreciate the functionality.

As for feedback, I think having the text boxes at the top for weighting treated graphically might be better. Either some up/down or +/- icons to just tweak those might be cool. (maybe an ajaxy slider that pops up?)

But otherwise dig the concept. +1

[diiq]

Seems to be missing some short names --- for instance, while diiq.com and diiq.org are owned, diiq.net is unclaimed --- but 'diiq' does not appear at all, despite being four characters long. What qualifies a domain name to appear in your list?

[jcrocholl]

My list is a fairly random sampling of the huge search space of available domain names. I'm planning to keep adding more names in the future, trying to strike a balance between good names (short but readable) and more names (requiring more storage). Fortunately, the App Engine Datastore has linear complexity for the number of query results, so adding more names doesn't slow down the searching.

[DanBlake]

Is there a way to sort out domains with numbers + hyphens in them? I imagine most people are most concerned with llll.com domains.

[jcrocholl]

Yes, you can enter very negative weights in the input boxes for digits (numbers) and dashes (hyphens). Then these domains will be sorted down to the end of the list (below the end of the page).

[qeorge]

This is fantastic. Otherwise I use freshdrop.net, but this is surfacing good domains more quickly. Well executed.

[wings]

I use freshdrop.net too. There are a lot of domain names on there so here's a good filter:

  * exclude all but .com
  * exclude hyphens and numbers
  * set char limit to 12
  * click "Geo" at the top of the page

results right now: tipolo.com, treeville.com, umoru.com, etc

[roundsquare]

Very cool. Two thoughts:

1) I wouldn't call the numbers you enter into the boxes "scores." They are really weights - I don't know about others but I got confused by that at first.

2) Is there a way to substring searches? E.g. If I type in "debate" I might want "mydebate" to come up...

[jcrocholl]

Thank you all for the great feedback!

1) You're right, but the boxes (and columns of numbers) are probably going to disappear in the next version. Maybe we'll have sliders or radio buttons to adjust between "Important" and "Don't care" for some properties.

2) Real substring searches are not supported because they are expensive. But your example is supported: type "debate" in the second keyword input field for suffix matches.

[seldo]

Another useful tool along these lines is http://domai.nr/, which searches all the available TLDs, not just the big 5. However, it expects you to have a full word in mind rather than suggesting things.

[aristus]

use different colors for .com, .net, etc columns.

if it is free, use the black text "free". if it is taken, grey out that cell, with no text.

that will make it much easier to scan with the eye

[dbz]

I like it a lot; however, it seems that if I type, my name, for example (my actual name) it doesn't check it. It seems like there is a very limited list of domains? Although I like it so far.

[secos]

The scoring mechanism is weird, and not quite intuitive. However, I played around with it for a few min and it started to make /some/ sense.

Overall, very useful for finding short names.

[bioweek]

Why does it say magic.com is free? Or am I doing it wrong?

[jcrocholl]

Because magic.com doesn't have an A record. If you click on the "free" link, the registrar (moniker.com for now) will tell you that it's taken. I know this is disappointing, but I haven't found a good way to do bulk whois for millions of names, DNS is much easier.

[sammcd]

Ya, I got excited and tried to buy magic.com too :(

[tewks]

I really like it... it would be great, as I'm sure you know, to tie in registration.

On that note, who is everyone using for registration these days?

[jhancock]

just moved everything from godaddy to namecheap. It was a good bit of work, but glad to have finished it.

[Shamiq]

gandi.net is a French registrar that I use.

[stanleydrew]

name.com is really good. free private whois, and the interface is really great compared to something like godaddy. they do exactly what i want them to do and nothing more.

[jacquesm]

Satisfied moniker.com customer here.

[NathanKP]

You need better moderation of the suggestion feature along the right. I doubt you want it saying random garble and things like "gay hot lesbians."

[jcrocholl]

You're right. At some point I'm going to start using http://getsatisfaction.com/ or think about moderation/filtering. But for now I really like the direct feedback from users, so I'm going to delete bogus entries manually from time to time.

[johnl]

Was going to suggest a feedback/comment section but I see you already have it. An excellent way of getting responses from the end user.

[dschobel]

Very cool. What is the backend written in?

[jcrocholl]

It's written in about 2500 lines of Python, using Django 1.1 (app-engine-patch) on Google App Engine. Full source code is here: http://github.com/jcrocholl/scoretool

[csomar]

it's hosted in appspot, so it should be python (unless Google supported other languages)

[fauigerzigerk]

If you can make it work that would be cool. Currently there are too many reported free that are actually taken.