Show HN: Search Domain and Username in the same place | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Search Domain and Username in the same place

getsocialdomain.com

56 pointsrajasimon34 comments

Your design is difficult for people with non-typical color vision. Your indicators for available/taken need to have at least two different differentiators - either a symbol+color, symbol+text, or color+text.

For (even partially) color-blind people, solely using color doesn't have as strong of a meaning. In this case, it's not that I can't tell the colors apart - I can - but I can't immediately infer what the colors mean. The way I interact with colors is that they just don't have as strong of an implicit meaning as it seems they do for "normal" color vision people (probably because my color perception betrayed me too many times for me to develop a trust/dependency over the years).

You can infer the available/not from the pop-out link, but that's disconnected from the status color icon, which makes it less intuitively connected.

The color as distinguishing factor also has a cultural aspect - I think you're using stoplight colors, which are probably fairly safe, but it definitely doesn't hurt to help out people from a wide range of backgrounds / capabilities by adding another factor to distinguish.

These are valuable feedback and I thank you for that. I'm new to tailwind ecosystem and totally new to design as well. I will change look based on your comments.

I wouldn't recommend tailwind, especially if you want to actually get into design

https://dev.to/brianboyko/tailwindcss-adds-complexity-does-n...

This doesn't seem to work [to me]. I searched my GitHub username and it shows that it's available although I currently use it.

I get people complaining about Facebook user search but not Github. I'm using this API to check GitHub username availability.

https://api.github.com/users/yournamehere

Tell me the above one is working for you or not?

Not them, but I see the same thing.

When I try the api link, I get back an ID and a bunch of other data. If I put something random in it, I get message: not found

Oh I got it. There is multiple reason that can happen and I called those are Ghosts accounts. There is high chance if you request to GitHub they will grant use it.

Chiming in here — not sure about this. I checked for a name that showed as "available" on the link above. I requested the owner of that Github handle a year ago if they were willing to release it to me, as they have zero public repos on there. Long story short, they didn't.

No chance that Github will take the handle off them and give it to us too.

My point is, this is definitely a bug, since the above account is not a ghost account.

> those are Ghost accounts… high chance if you request to GitHub they will grant use

From sibling comment:

    wheybags 0 minutes ago | root | parent | next [–]

    My username is wheybags on github, I actively use the account, 
    both public and private repos, and it shows as available on your site.

This doesn’t sound like a ghost account.

More to the point, I’m reasonably aggressive about registering my preferred nick, and your site thinks it is available where it is definitely in use by me.

GitHub shows available, it is not.

Based on what comes up as green vs. red when I test your site, it occurs to me you may be failing to detect the difference between public and private preference settings. For instance, if someone turned off public search preference, or public graph.

When I try the api link with my account*, I get the data returned.

On the site, it says my account is available.

When I put something random on the api link, it returned the not found message.

This is also not working for me on Github, Facebook and Instagram...

I don't think it has anything to do with Ghost accounts, maybe your app has reached some quota limit...

My username is wheybags on github, I actively use the account, both public and private repos, and it shows as available on your site.

That API finds my username. Your page still shows it as available :)

Same issue for my username as well

See my other comment. It happen to a few accounts. Those are inactive accounts and I hope you can claim it.

I'm not sure that's correct. My account is very definitely active on GitHub, but you're showing it as available.

https://api.github.com/users/myname shows myname as being active. The "updated_at" field shows 2021-11-16. Unless you're counting a 4-month break as being a "ghost account," there's some error.

----

Edit: And, in case you are counting a 4-month break as a "ghost," I looked up the most prolific GitHub user (according to some list), fabpot, and your site is also showing his name as available.

My account is definitely not inactive (I've done multiple pushes to it yesterday and today) and the API you're using confirms I'm active yet it still shows as available on your site. So there's definitely a bug in your code somewhere.

Aside from that though, this is a neat idea. If you can iron out the kinks you should be on to a really good platform here.

Looks really cool and useful +1

Instagram doesn't work for me and github names show available even when they are not. Other than that really cool.

If it gets enough traffic you can surely monetize it with some affiliate links to domain portals :)

Yes, Instagram is showing green when usernames are not available.

Not sure if it’s hit some API limits behind the scenes but quite a few searches seem to incorrectly show the name as available on GitHub and YouTube (and possibly other listed sites - I didn’t check them all).

Looks like great idea. You could expand it to more domains.

Got a hit for .co and .so for kdfjsklj, which isn't registered with either.

Facebook search also didn't detect most queries I tried.

This is pretty cool and useful. It seems to be taking a while to load, would love to see it in action.

I didn't expect this in front page. Somehow my celery is stopped running now I restarted it. Also Instagram disable my account for checking the username availability. I resume all things hope now it's working fine.

Just tried it, it's still shot. But fun tool if it's not run over by HN.

We broke it!

lol so true. I do have the higher server configuration that take care of HN load but my celery is not working properly. I changed to immediate tasks instead of async one with countdown=0 and added autoscale in configuration. let's see what else is breaking...

What is pxf.io, where the .com link goes? Is it some kind of affiliate tracker?

uBlock Origin blocks it. The WHOIS points to https://impact.com/, some kind of marketing company. Looks like it's a tracker alright.

yeah that was the bad idea. I signed up with NameCheap affiliate market and they gave me this link ( impact-I don't know who those are too ).

I will think of something more easy and acceptable way to monetise this service. Not to mention that the server is going crazy.:)

Personally I don't mind affiliate links, if the site is transparent about it. If the site says it uses affiliate links and then uBO blocks it I'd at least understand why, and if I didn't want to use that link I could just go and search my prefered registra myself. HN in particular doesn't mind if you monitise your Show HN posts, the community is usually touchy about not being transparent about these things though.

I'd be more than happy to kick back a few bucks if your tool helps me register a brand. I have nothing against affiliate links, as long as you clearly mention which links are or aren't affiliate links.

I’ve always used knowem but I prefer this UI

I didn't know that this knowem existed and I thank you for liking my design over that. Few people asked me to include more extensions but I think that will pollute the UI. I will think of something nice UI that blends with existing UI and also include more extension over time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com