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Ask HN: What do you think of our new domain name generator?

15 points| hessenwolf | 15 years ago |nametoolkit.com

We know it has been done before, but we think we do it rather differently. Please tell us what you think. All ideas and criticisms are welcome.

36 comments

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[+] richpalmer2|15 years ago|reply
Looks similar to the project I announced last week (http://rewordio.us) here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2118240

I like the interface to show additional (whois, etc) information. Have you had folks purchase any domain names through your affiliate links - or has it mostly been used to come with with crazy combinations of words?

[+] nt_mark|15 years ago|reply
Hi Rich, I've never seen your site before, I have very little free time, and I use it to code more than read the news. Your site isn't bad.. it's not the best I've seen and not the worst either, which is similar to how I'd currently rate ours.

domaintyper.com is one of my new favourites and I was aware of domai.nr but found it too minimalist to be useful to me, and some minor ones you'll get through Google , or DuckDuckGo :).

Actually one of the things I learned on the project was how poorly I'd initally researched the market. There are far more competitors than I thought in this space. Many are proof of concept or prepend adjectives, some are more advanced. We are trying to be creative and we're coming up with most algorithms and UI concepts from scratch out of necessity as we're not hugely impressed with what we've seen elsewhere.

Yes we have made sales, I won't divulge the number, safe to say, not enough for me to quit my day job but we're moving on much faster than expected. Being an affiliate, as you probably know has it's drawbacks in terms of not being able to track user behaviour once they disappear into the registrar's site.

Name Toolkit doesn't merely attach words to other words randomly, or prepend random words, but if that's how it looked, then we're not doing well enough. We're working to make our search better daily and we hope that will become apparent if you re-visit.

All the best with your efforts.

[+] yuvadam|15 years ago|reply
Lots of domains show up available when they're not.

Domain hacks would be great.

Otherwise - nice interface, very responsive.

[+] hessenwolf|15 years ago|reply
Ouch. Using Verisign's domain files - I will check what went wrong - I assume I misread them.

Thank you :)

[+] hessenwolf|15 years ago|reply
Bug identified... almost fixed.
[+] josegonzalez|15 years ago|reply
"There should be a domain name lookup service that combines a thesaurus, misspeller, and translator"

http://twitter.com/#!/savant/status/24226152759431168

Where do you get the Verisign's list? I was looking around for this when I tweeted that.

[+] hessenwolf|15 years ago|reply
Hi,

1. Our translator is currently switched off. We might add a checkbox to update it. Renualdo? We switched it off because we used google translate, and then cleaned the output (i.e., kill aux, des, della, etc). We are in the process of getting an offline translation kit together though for another project, so that can be added instead in a month or two.

2. We applied through verisign's website and faxed (no kidding - we faxed) our company info. We have a fully registered limited liability (plc) company so it was not too hard. It took about three weeks though to get access.

3. We have thesaurus (clearly) but that is only the start of the fun... and the mispeller is on the list of things to add, after domain hacks. ;)

[+] sandipagr|15 years ago|reply
It's good work. Coming up with a name is the hardest part.

It would be nice to have simple filters like no hyphens in name and domain length limit. Also, some way of separating unavailable domains will be great.

[+] hessenwolf|15 years ago|reply
We can add a sort by domain length - you will get a completely different sequence of results. At the moment it is sorted by top n results from each algorithm (eight algos so far).

Hyphens - there is only ever one result.

Separating the unavailable - second person who asked - Renualdo is working on this as I type. (now I must go back to fixing the plurals)

[+] arepb|15 years ago|reply
It's fast, but a few things I have an issue with:

- only shows .com - doesn't show splits or domain hacks (eg del.icio.us) - not clear when I see only orange results if those are unavailable

[+] hessenwolf|15 years ago|reply
Not quite in order...

1. Splits & domain hacks. My partner in crime will be happy you said that - we will add. Prob at least a week though.

2. Orange - yes - means that they are unavailable. We can add a comment to make that more clear. If you click on an orange link, you get a 'more like this' effect where we search with the underlying phrase.

3. .com. Valid point - a bit like the domain hacks I didn't think people were that interested in odd domains so it wasn't rolled out at first. It will be added shortly. Thank you :)

[+] jusob|15 years ago|reply
it looks very similar to mine (http://domain-generator.us/), but for .COM only: synonyms, different combinations of names, etc. Someone posted a list of domain name generators on this forum a while ago (cannot find the link), there are a lot of sites that offer similar functions. You might want to focus on that other do not have to stand out.
[+] hessenwolf|15 years ago|reply
Yes - we have seen it, and a few others. Try some queries in ours, and some queries in yours, and you will see that we use quite a different set of algorithms although there is some overlap.

We all like some healthy competition, right? How have you been doing with yours?

[+] code_duck|15 years ago|reply
I like how it searches synonyms and homophones. One thing you might add is plurals.
[+] hessenwolf|15 years ago|reply
We are pluralising nouns only - but the selection of nouns is limited by our grammar db. It should have been around 4th/5th result, depending on the number of search words.

Have you got the example and we can look into it?

[+] GertG|15 years ago|reply
You might want to correct the typo in the second heading: How to I use it?
[+] hessenwolf|15 years ago|reply
The thing about the internet is that it is so publically humiliating. Now I know that that is there and don't clock off the day job for another few hours.

Thanks for the tip.

[+] hessenwolf|15 years ago|reply
We just got a bang operator on duckduckgo for our new domain name generator. Awesome.
[+] Charuru|15 years ago|reply
Show 2 columns, separate the orange and the blue, so I don't have to look at the unavailable.
[+] renualdo|15 years ago|reply
I was thinking of having a show/hide taken domains checkbox above the list and/or a site-wide preference if you never, ever want to see the taken ones.

The idea of showing the taken ones is that they might be close to expiring and valuable to you somehow.