

Ask HN: Please, review wordoid.com, a smart naming webapp - op
http://wordoid.com/

======
op
Wordoid.com is a webapp that helps you come up with a catchy name for your
product, company or domain.

It makes up new words that are unlikely to appear in a dictionary. It knows
how to create words in several languages: English, Spanish, French and Italian
at the moment. It is even able to create words in imaginary "languages",
constructed by blending two or more real languages together.

I would appreciate your feedback!

P.S. This is the second time I would like to ask you to review wordoid.com
here at HN.

The first review, located at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=621855>,
gave me lots of ideas and suggestions, that I believe made the webapp a little
better:

1) The user interface got an overhaul and became much more user-friendly.

2) Domain availability checks are more precise now, and .net domain check is
added.

3) The webapp works faster now.

Thanks go to JunkDNA, matt1, nwjsmith, oskarpearson, pierrefar, philh, papa,
yummyfajitas,and all the other guys who posted their comments.

~~~
rarestblog
Maybe you should list those implemented ideas if you honestly want them
reviewed?

~~~
op
Added a short list of major improvements. Thanks!

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davecardwell
I’d like the ability to filter the TLD(s) I am interested in; for example I
may only want to buy a domain if it ends in .com, so all the available .net
wordoids are of no use to me.

~~~
op
Thanks for your suggestion, Dave!

~~~
davecardwell
I came back to read through the comments and realised I never actually
complimented you on a job well done!

I’ve bookmarked the site and will definitely use it for my next project—I
always find picking a name and domain a pain.

~~~
op
Thank you, Dave!

------
chaosmachine
All that help text is not really necessary. You could get rid of it. Nobody
will read 3 paragraphs of small text to figure out how to use your site.
Encourage people to just try it.

Make the form the center of attention. Don't be afraid to bump up the font
size a bit more. You could move the language checkboxes down to a second line.
The "Create" button could be bigger and more obvious. Make it say "Go" or
"Search".

~~~
trefn
Agreed. I didn't read it until I saw this comment and I went back. Even then,
I only skimmed.

The combination of the first line (search bar, languages) plus the set of
words that start out on the front page give a pretty good idea of what it is.

~~~
bkovitz
It's OK if the reader can skip or skim the help text. That's good graphic
design: your eye finds the main things easily, and then digs into the details
as necessary.

------
scottjackson
(I know this kind of feature would probably be a pain to implement)

On the front-page I see wordoid called "tradio" (it's number 15 for me, maybe
it's different for others) -- I think it would be cool if the web app was able
to recognise that wordoids like that end in a TLD (trad.io, in this case) and
check the availability of that domain as well.

Apart from that, looks pretty cool.

~~~
op
Thank you, Scott, this is a great idea! I like it, and I'm going to think on
it.

------
roryokane
The back button is currently broken; searching for a new wordoid doesn't add
anything to the history. When I visited the site, I first searched for
wordoids containing something, and then I wanted to go back to the completely
random wordoids. I clicked the back button, but I found it didn't work. A
clear button for the search box would also work instead, but I think people
would want to go to previous searches more than they would want to clear the
fragment box.

I also didn't read the help text below the form until I read a comment about
it, so I didn't need it, but it wasn't distracting. The quality help text
doesn't tell me anything more than the form tells me, but it was helpful to
find out about the 10 character fragment limit and the blending languages
strategy. Perhaps you could replace it with a "tips" section, or put it under
a link that says " > Help" with a right arrow that drops down the help when
you click on it.

------
sammcd
I'm a big fan. I am in the process of looking for a company name and this is
really helping to give me some ideas.

My suggestion is a "buy domain" button. I feel like this would allow you to
convert this to money quicker. In the list I am given no suggestion that
clicking on the domain will take me to godaddy, if I was given a buy domain
button I would be more likely to make money.

Also you could give me a choice of registrars. It seems you can only make
money off of godaddy customers. I would be very likely to click your affiliate
link to 1and1.com and purchase, but for now I will navigate their myself to
make purchases.

------
philfreo
The "Feedback" button is overlapping the most important UI element on the
screen (the "Create" button) when my browser is at a width of anything less
than 1036px. This isn't really acceptable... I shouldn't have to have a
browser wider than 960px to not get scrollbars - much less to have something
overlapping buttons.

Aside from that, I very much love this app. I'll definitely be using it next
time I need a good domain name. One thing that would be nice is the ability to
_only_ show domains where the .com and/or .net is available.

------
nuggien
How about the ability to limit results to only contain names that are of a
certain length? Would be great if I was searching for a short domain name.

~~~
op
This feature is going be implemented soon. Stay tuned!

------
ivanyv
Amazing app. I've already found a few domains worth buying!

You should partner with GoDaddy to send domain purchasers there.

------
devin
I love it! I love it! I love it!

I've used a lot of word generators, built some of my own, etc. -- but these
are great names.

The only thing I noticed that was slightly annoying to me off the bat was I
had no idea what the little bar was until I moused over it and realized it was
the number of hits it received on Google.

I think it'd also be good to integrate this with another service -- perhaps a
hosting service? You should talk to linode, dreamhost, slicehost, etc. --
Perhaps you could license this to registrars?

------
akamaka
The checkbox and label "French" appear on different lines in my broswer, which
is confusing.

Try putting all the checkboxes on the next line, or putting each one in a CSS
nowrap block.

~~~
op
akamaka, which browser do you use?

~~~
akamaka
Firefox 3 on Ubuntu 9

------
Maciek416
Wow, this is a hugely improved interface over the version you posted a while
back. Congrats!

------
devin
Okay one final comment for you:

I think one of my chief issues with these sorts of apps is that after they are
released to the public, the algorithms never change, and you see page after
page of registered domains, which are completely unhelpful. I would suggest
you continue to add other languages to the mix, and consider modifying your
algorithms slightly just to keep things interesting.

------
tome
Doesn't work in Konqueror 4.

~~~
op
Thanks for pointing this out!

~~~
tome
You're welcome. Konqueror's a pretty marginal browser, but I use it for about
95% of my home browsing (and Firefox for the rest, which copes happily with
your site).

------
olefoo
I notice that if you select multiple languages and give it a startswith
"word", it does not translate the given word and attempt the lingual
variations.

For instance I gave it the word "life" and was expecting variations of "vida
_" "vie_ " "vita _" "life_ " but only got words generated from the last stem.

------
bkovitz
I really like this concept. The execution is simple and straightforward.
Despite the sophistication, anyone can understand it.

One question, though: How is it even theoretically possible to make money from
this?

~~~
op
Thank you, Ben! As to the money, revenue source is the affiliation with domain
registrars (GoDaddy, etc).

------
kingkawn
I think it should advise that the process could take a little while. My
initial inclination was to x out of the window after watching all those things
spin for a bit with no response.

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thisisnotmyname
Small thing - I think it should be "natural" instead if "naturally".

~~~
manlon
Agree. "Naturally sounding" isn't.

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DanielStraight
First thing I noticed was a UI bug. I thought I was forced to enter something
in the "contain/start with/end with" box. I almost left the site before I
realized that it was optional.

Second, it is very slow. It makes no sense to me that the processing is done
with AJAX. I'm already clicking a button to submit info. Would it really hurt
to generate everything on the backend (which would presumably be much faster)
and reload the whole page?

------
natrius
When I go to the next page of results, I see a loading graphic for the last
ten results on the new page. However, you're loading 15 new results each time.
The user should always see the first new result when loading a new page.
Scroll me back up to the top of the results, or just add the new results to
the existing page instead of replacing them.

------
fauigerzigerk
I like it very much. I wish it faster though.

------
devin
Oh and one more thing! You should have the ability to include domain hacks
like del.icio.us, fabulo.us, etc.

------
tsondermann
Well done app. Adding to my list of "what do we call this thing and is the
domain available" list. Thanks.

------
Nate879
The text that should be to the right of domain names that aren't available is
below them instead.

Here is a screenshot: <http://imgur.com/teHch.png>

~~~
op
Thanks for pointing this out. Iceweasel browser made the font a little bigger
than expected. I will try to fix that.

------
dpnewman
I would love to see all international suffixes included.

And options for results weighting towards shorter names.

Also - ajaxy - real-time search would be nice a la domai.nr.

Nice work so far.

------
lacker
It needs higher quality names. "depressurancs" cannot really be one of the
best five names available.

------
dan_the_welder
It's fun. I have played with it both times you have posted. It looks good and
works well.

------
vaksel
you need to add the ability to add a max length to the word

------
superjared
Outstandical!

