Ask HN: Please, review wordoid.com, a smart naming webapp

by op • 17 years ago

71 49 17 years ago

op10• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

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

op10• 17 years ago

Added a short list of major improvements. Thanks!

scottjackson• 17 years ago

(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.

op10• 17 years ago

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

davecardwell2• 17 years ago

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.

op10• 17 years ago

Thanks for your suggestion, Dave!

davecardwell2• 17 years ago

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.

tome2• 17 years ago

Doesn't work in Konqueror 4.

jacquesm• 17 years ago

why on earth would that be modded down...

op10• 17 years ago

Thanks for pointing this out!

tome2• 17 years ago

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).

akamaka2• 17 years ago

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.

op10• 17 years ago

akamaka, which browser do you use?

akamaka2• 17 years ago

Firefox 3 on Ubuntu 9

daveungerer• 17 years ago

Same here, but for Italian. Firefox 3, OS X.

tsondermann• 17 years ago

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

fauigerzigerk• 17 years ago

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

kingkawn• 17 years ago

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.

chaosmachine• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

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.

bkovitz2• 17 years ago

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.

Elepsis• 17 years ago

I actually did read the help text, but it only left me confused, because the lines don't clearly match up to the text boxes. I had a moment of "oh, where do I adjust the quality?" before I realized that it was just referring to the first text box. I'd do away with it.

charliepark• 17 years ago

This is spot-on.

That whole "omit needless words" exercise? This is an excellent place where it could be applied. The form is straightforward. Just have people play with it.

sammcd• 17 years ago

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.

olefoo• 17 years ago

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.

vaksel• 17 years ago

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

thisisnotmyname• 17 years ago

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

manlon• 17 years ago

Agree. "Naturally sounding" isn't.

ivanyv• 17 years ago

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

You should partner with GoDaddy to send domain purchasers there.

dpnewman• 17 years ago

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.

superjared• 17 years ago

Outstandical!

philfreo• 17 years ago

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.

bkovitz2• 17 years ago

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?

op10• 17 years ago

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

Nate879• 17 years ago

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

op10• 17 years ago

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

Maciek416• 17 years ago

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

natrius• 17 years ago

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.

nuggien• 17 years ago

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.

op10• 17 years ago

This feature is going be implemented soon. Stay tuned!

roryokane• 17 years ago

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.

lacker• 17 years ago

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

devin3• 17 years ago

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?

devin3• 17 years ago

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

devin3• 17 years ago

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.

DanielStraight• 17 years ago

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?

dan_the_welder• 17 years ago

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

Ask HN: Please, review wordoid.com, a smart naming webapp

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