Please review my web application: http://safe.mn/ | Hacker News Reader

Please review my web application: http://safe.mn/

16 pointsjusob5 comments

I wanted to address the two main criticisms to URL shorteners: security and transparency. Safe.mn creates a short link, but also performs extensive security checks on these links. Any link that is potentially harmful to the visitor gets flagged. When a visitor click on one of these flagged links, Safe.mn shows a warning (with a list of issues) instead of redirecting the visitor to the final URL. There are a few examples on the website that you can check: http://safe.mn/6, http://safe.mn/2, http://safe.mn/3

I'd like to get the feedback of the community: what sucks, what do you like, is is just another URL shortener for you do you see any additional value, etc.

I've just launched safe.mn, it is not complete yet. The biggest missing part is decent statistics. I'm already logging all the information, but I'm not displaying them yet. Let me know if you find anything else missing.

Just my two-cents but I think there is too much content on the frontpage. It is a URL shortener and if it was my site, I would just put: - a logo - the 2 textboxes + 2 buttons - a very quick tagline / description of your service - the API info, news, faq, feedback can be small text at the bottom or something...

Thanks for the feedback, I will make some changes tonight.

I like the idea. A lot of people are still surfing with ancient internet explorer versions so they will benefit from protection firefox and chrome users might already have. My suggestion would be to slim it down (skip the stats stuff and follow wenberts suggestion to simplify the start page) and see if the security-stuff convinces enough people to use the service.

The theme does not look right.

Browsers like Google chrome will warn you about security issues when visiting a website. I don't see any additional value in adding this feature to a URL shortener.

IMHO there are better ways to utilize your time (assuming that you are a very good hacker) than making another URL shortener.

Thank you, I will look into these issues with Chrome.

I also wanted to get familiar with an MVC framework, so a URL shortener seemed the ideal candidate for this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com