20 ms·

Show HN: My side project – Do I need a visa for...?

• stumacd 14y ago
  Nice side project! A dual citizenship feature might be a nice touch - for instance travelling to Brazil is easier on a European passport than an Australian. So it would be great to know what to use when. One bug report: On the one page - Australian citizens require a visa to visit Canada. Australian citizens do not require a visa to visit Canada. http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/australian-citizen/travelling/canada http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/australian-citizen/trave...
• jlangenauer 14y ago
  For anyone that's wondering, there's data for about 60-odd countries in there at the moment, and I'm adding more every day.
  • frankdenbow 14y ago
    Fwiw, I was searching for united states or american before looking for US. Just got Visas to visit Brazil, Liberia, and Ghana, so I know the process. All the sites for this info suck and you have a good opportunity to make something useful.
  • yen223 14y ago
    Great job on the website! I literally had the same idea a few months back - even thought of a similar title (DoINeedAFuckingVisa.com). Never materialized when I realized just how complex the immigration rules are. But you know what they say about ideas and execution. Good on you for executing :)
• yesimahuman 14y ago
  Nice work! Noticed one issue though: did a US Citizen -> Brazil check and it said I didn't need a visa but then says I do need one.
  • jlangenauer 14y ago
    Thanks for picking this up - I've fixed that now!
• sobbybutter 14y ago
  Thanks for making this! I'm making travel plans right now and it's quite handy.
• sav-henderson 14y ago
  This is awesome! You should also add the ability to post comments about visas and the visa process, since in my experience, some border crossing agents try to overcharge you and you can get them to lower their price simply by stating that you "know" they should be charging x not y. An on the ground report of the visa process can be invaluable next to the usually inaccurate/out-of-date info available through the official channels.
  • jlangenauer 14y ago
    I'm thinking about this, but one of my motivations for doing it was to have only primary-sourced, up-to-date information - there's so much rumour and third-hand information on forums when you search for visa requirements, and I wanted to do something more authoritative and trustworthy. But it could work as long as the comments are clearly separated from the "official" information.
    • drazvan 14y ago
      Or maybe just add a "report an error" option. I've tested the countries I've visited recently and others have probably done the same, so if you see that your official information is contradicted by all (or many) of your users, you can raise a flag and manually check if your official information is still up to date.
• drazvan 14y ago
  A quick rule of thumb for European Union member states: no visas are needed for any EU citizen to go any other EU country (as a tourist). It shows that I need a visa to go from Romania to the UK or Sweden (that is false, Romania, the UK and Sweden are all EU members).
  • jlangenauer 14y ago
    It should be saying "no information available" for those, as I haven't done the research on the transitional arrangements for Romania and Bulgaria that might be in effect (such as in the UK) until 2014.
    • drazvan 14y ago
      That is correct, work visas are restricted, tourist visas however are not required and I am not aware of any such requirement between any two EU member states. I haven't used my passport in years, I use my Romanian ID card whenever I travel in the EU (and it is my understanding that any EU citizen can travel - for business or pleasure - within the EU without visas or even a passport).
      • jlangenauer 14y ago
        I'll add that information shortly - for things like EU citizens travelling in the EU, I try to put a little more information than just "no tourist visa is required".
        • benjiweber 14y ago
          You also don't need a visa for UK -> Switzerland. Switzerland is also Schengen so you don't even need a passport to enter from other Schengen members (which unfortunately excludes the UK) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area
  • yen223 14y ago
    I am not a travel agent, but I believe even non-EU citizens don't need a visa to travel within the EU - you may only need a visa to enter a EU country.
• JoshTriplett 14y ago
  You might want some country aliases; since the first items in the drop-down had full country names in them, I expected to have to type "united states", not "US". Works great, otherwise. Seems handy as a standalone service; it'd help even more if integrated into a travel site like Hipmunk.
  • NonEUCitizen 14y ago
    Also if you can do some "folding" when matching... When I typed "vietnam" it did not match against "Viet Nam"
  • Locke1689 14y ago
    It's also grammatically incorrect. I am citizen of the United States of America, but an American citizen. The correct demonym in English for a citizen of the United States is American.
    • Samuel_Michon 14y ago
      Interesting. I'm a citizen of The Netherlands, so assuming a faulty system I searched at 'T' and 'N', but I found it at the correct place, 'Dutch'.
      • jurre 14y ago
        If you follow the format: I'm a <Dutch> citizen. That's actually correct, and what I used intuitively.
• nategraves 14y ago
  This is great and is certainly something I'll use as I'm exploring summer travel options. One thing I would love to see though, is a simple "yes" or "no" at the front of the sentence. I had to read "US citizens do not require a visa to visit Argentina." a couple of times to make sure I had it right.
• frankdenbow 14y ago
  Yes! Simple and useful for me (I travel a lot, was looking up this kind of info yesterday). I would change up the background since its a bit distracting. Congrat on shipping!
• thedays 14y ago
  Great work - nice, clean interface. One small thing you might want to consider adding is geo-ip identification of the user to detect which country they are visiting from, and default the country selected in "I'm a _ citizen" to that country.
  • ghayes 14y ago
    Yes, and it was difficult to figure out what to put after "American" and "United States" both turned up no results, but agree auto-fill would make this an easy go-to for visa information.
  • jlangenauer 14y ago
    Yes, that's definitely on the "to-do" list.
• bedspax 14y ago
  Congrats, cool.
• samfoo 14y ago
  Delta used to have an awesome frontend for Timatic (the system that all of the airlines use for determining their own liability in visa requirement issues) that I used exclusively. Sadly, it seems they've removed it from their new site. I was able to find a similar offering[1] for free on Gulf Air's site, though. A nice frontend to Timatic would be awesome, but I suspect that the licensing is too pricey... [1] http://www.gulfair.com/English/info/prepare/Pages/VisaInformation.aspx http://www.gulfair.com/English/info/prepare/Pages/VisaInform...
  • eurleif 14y ago
    Hypothetically, I wonder if there would be legal issues with running a bot to scrape data from Gulf Air's page. They don't seem to have a ToS which prohibits it, as far as I can tell; and I would expect the data itself to be non-copyrightable.
  • smikhanov 14y ago
    SkyTeam offers Timatic frontend on their website: http://www.skyteam.com/en/your-trip/Services/Visa-and-Health/ http://www.skyteam.com/en/your-trip/Services/Visa-and-Health...
    • qb 14y ago
      *A as well: http://www.staralliance.com/en/services/visa-and-health/ http://www.staralliance.com/en/services/visa-and-health/
  • hahla 14y ago
    Ouch the fees for Timatic are steep indeed. 0 – 500 transactions: Included in Fixed Fee - EUR 499/yr 501 – 100,000 transactions: EUR (€) 0.1299 per transaction 100,001 – 600,000 transactions: EUR (€) 0.1166 per transaction 600,001 – 1,100,000 transactions: EUR (€) 0.1033 per transaction 1,100,001 – 1,600,000 transactions: EUR (€) 0.0888 per transaction 1,600,001 – 2,100,000 transactions: EUR (€) 0.0816 per transaction 2,100,001 onwards: EUR (€) 0.0743 per transaction
• NonEUCitizen 14y ago
  It does not work in IE9 -- screen flashes but info not displayed. I use large fonts. It DOES work in Chrome.
• jmharvey 14y ago
  Neat! I wonder if you could crowd-source some of the missing data. I tested it with "I'm a US Citizen travelling to Macau." but didn't get any result. The US state department web site http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_955.html#entry_requirements http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_955.html#en... says no visa is required.
  • nnash 14y ago
    If you're interested I can confirm that a passport is all you need to get into Macao as a U.S. citizen.
• beilabs 14y ago
  Irish Citizen => Nepal; Visa required...not in your database yet.
  • jlangenauer 14y ago
    Actually, I'm putting data in for Nepal right as we speak. And Irish citizens don't need a visa before arriving in Nepal, they can get one at the border.
    • seivan 14y ago
      Make sure to write the requirements for visa on arrival. http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/swedish-citizen/travelling/cambodia http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/swedish-citizen/travelli... $20 and recent passport photo, or you can bribe them with $10.
    • beilabs 14y ago
      So an Irish citizen still needs to obtain a visa then? I've been multiple times, always got the visa before hand, am married to a Nepalese citizen, still needed a visa.
• radiusq 14y ago
  Might want to put in some 'alias' type of names for some common countries, like England for United Kingdom for example.
• corywright 14y ago
  Very nice. One UX suggestion: don't center the text in the drop downs. It makes your eyes jump around when scanning the list, and has made me look past a country I was looking for.
• w3pm 14y ago
  How about just displaying the result below as soon as the selection is changed? Having me click a button, and then click 'Back' to try a new combo, is annoying. Other than that, great idea :)
• abuiles 14y ago
  I know I'm required to have visa for a bunch of places but not sure which ones, would be really cool to see given your nationality all the countries for which you are required to have visa. btw, I'm Colombian, we don't need visa for Russia and Turkey (Data not available yet in your DB).
• opinicus 14y ago
  Interesting project. Outside of interface choices, are there any differences between this and some of the existing offerings like DoYouNeedVisa[1] or VisaMapper[2] (which is crowdsourced and includes the very important information of whether visa are available at the border)? [1] http://www.doyouneedvisa.com/ http://www.doyouneedvisa.com/ [2] http://visamapper.com/ http://visamapper.com/
  • jlangenauer 14y ago
    The first one of those has some rather questionable information, so I wouldn't plan your trip based on what it says. For example, it claims Australians can get a visa on arrival in East Timor, which isn't true. I've not come across visamapper.com, but it looks good.
• robertomb 14y ago
  How to help improving information?
• niggler 14y ago
  Is there a way to list the visa requirements for a US citizen? (just a simple list of the other countries and whether or not a visa is required to visit those countries)
  • jlangenauer 14y ago
    Not right at the moment, but I might put that in later once I've got more of that information. Wikipedia already has this, though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_United_States_citizens http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_United_St...
• aleksandrm 14y ago
  Text is very hard to read on that background, barely noticeable. I suggest changing background, or text color and making it slightly larger.
  • signed0 14y ago
    That was my first thought as well. Just extending the white translucent box all the way to the bottom of the page would make a big difference.
• inovator 14y ago
  Thank you so much! Your site saved us big time! My girlfriend is from one of the visa waiver countries, and she is coming to the U.S. to visit me in June. And guess what? We have never heard of the ESTA requirement until today. I wish online travel ticket agency could be more specific and tell us all the required documents. Does anyone know what would happen if you forgot or didn't know about ESTA?
  • jlangenauer 14y ago
    You get denied boarding - airlines have access to the ESTA system at check-in. Glad to have been of help!
  • andrewcooke 14y ago
    yeah, that's crazy. luckily i had an old passport with a us visa (for complicated reasons) that was still valid. otherwise, they wouldn't have let me on the plane...
• udit99 14y ago
  So about a year ago, I created Visamapper(www.visamapper.com) for the same purpose.I ended up crowdsourcing the data. Slightly different take on the interface as your project. But I have to say, I'm just a little jealous because visamapper didn't get any attention on HN :-). Anyways, Nice job with the design. Small nitpick: The list of countries at the bottom is unreadable with the current font color.
• aaronwhite 14y ago
  Really well done and love the SEO-ness that provides real value for folks! Nice tool
• archer174 14y ago
  The US to India has a spelling error. Visa is spelled vist.
• gottagetmac 14y ago
  United States -> China (a pretty important route that does require a visa) says no information.
• wting 14y ago
  I don't understand the presentation. Allow the user to choose nationality from a drop down box, then show a world map colored various ways: - green no visa - blue for easy to obtain visas - red for difficult to obtain visas On a side note, it should probably be "United States citizen" and not "US". Also, US -> China is a very common route that requires a visiting / mailing your passport to a Chinese embassy to obtain a visa that you should probably have listed.
  • udit99 14y ago
    Your suggestion sounds exactly like <Shameless_plug> Visamapper (www.visamapper.com) </Shameless_plug> But DoIneedAVisaFor is a more direct way to answer the question if you already know your Destination.
    • mmahemoff 14y ago
      I like your site, but why not show the color key below the map?
      • udit99 14y ago
        Thats how I originally had it, then the legend increased in size and refused to fit cleanly under the map and I pulled it out. Would you consider it a huge deal or a minor distraction?
    • jonathanberger 14y ago
      I just tried to visit but got a "can't find the server" error.
      • udit99 14y ago
        not sure why. Works right now. Try again?
      • SammoJ 14y ago
        I had to drop the www http://visamapper.com/ http://visamapper.com/
• torya 14y ago
  When I read visa I always think of the credit card, not the document. Like what do you mean you don't know what you need a credit card for...? To buy stuff!
• prawn 14y ago
  Tried Australian going to Morocco and China. "Sorry, we've no information available." Could've got more data in there before playing your "Show HN" card maybe.
  • lancewiggs 14y ago
    and I had the same problem - New Zealander going to France. The answer, btw, is No visa required for New Zealanders in the Shengen agreement area.
  • yen223 14y ago
    To be fair, there are approximately 200 countries in this world. So you'll need data for about 200^2 = 40,000 different connections, and that's before considering subtleties like length of stay, PR statuses, etc.
    • prawn 14y ago
      Sure. I did say "more" rather than "all"; others have noted the absence of American in China. It'd make sense to prioritise some key ones before launching. Information for Australians is at Smart Traveller FWIW, under Entry/Exit info. e.g., http://www.smartraveller.gov.au/zw-cgi/view/Advice/China http://www.smartraveller.gov.au/zw-cgi/view/Advice/China
• nisse72 14y ago
  I like the idea, but the entries in the citizenship dropdown seem to be "not quite" sorted. Some examples of out-of-order entries: Ivorian (between Costa Rican and Croatian), Salvadorian (between Egyptian and Equatorial Guinean), Burmese (between Mozambiquan and Namibian) etc. [ edit ] Ah are they ordered by country name, not the adjective that's being shown? Unexpected and confusing.
• grecy 14y ago
  This is awesome. I'll get links to this from http://wikioverland.org http://wikioverland.org shortly.
• bigbang 14y ago
  This is awesome. Very useful. Also would be useful is a full list of countries that don't need a visa for, based on my citizenship.
• vellum 14y ago
  You should put the US as the first choice in the drop down box, since that's where most of your traffic will come from. Later when you have more data, you could put the top 15 in the first choices.
  • krallin 14y ago
    Even better, using the IP / language settings, they could probably make an educated guess! : )
  • sleepyhead 14y ago
    Really, Americans travel abroad now? ;)
• redact207 14y ago
  GREAT idea. I travel with my girlfriend often and it's a massive pain to work out visa requirements in countries, especially with "com" companies now setting up pretending to be an embassy. One issue though is how do you keep your database up to date? Some countries (eg Thailand) change their Visa requirements VERY often. Good work!
• wyclin 14y ago
  This is awesome. Where did you get all the data from btw?
• starik36 14y ago
  Very cool. I'd add the ability to locate the nearest embassy/consulate based on GeoLocation.
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• nchuhoai 14y ago
  Several comments layed out some alternatives, and it's usually fairly easy to figure out where you can go, my personal favorite are the Wikipedia pages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_United_States_citizens http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_United_St... However, there is one edge-case that I do not see covered: I am a permanent resident of Germany, citizen of Vietnam and hold a valid visa for the US. Sometimes these qualifications allow for entry (for example Mexico). I'd love to see an overview of what other countries I can visit without a visa given my residency and other visas.
• ciroduran 14y ago
  Just a correction: Venezuelan citizens can travel as tourists to the United Kingdom without the need of a visa, it is only necessary to obtain a visa if you do not have a biometric passport. - http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/venezuelan-citizen/travelling/united-kingdom http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/venezuelan-citizen/trave...
• vette982 14y ago
  Serves the same purpose as http://www.visahq.com/ http://www.visahq.com/, but it would nice to see a better presentation.
  • nico 14y ago
    Interesting, except it seems hard to use. For example, on the front page, I can't select citizenship country. Also, playing with it, I selected: Chile visa, for a Mexican national, living in China (http://chile.visahq.cn/requirements/Mexico/resident-China/ http://chile.visahq.cn/requirements/Mexico/resident-China/), and the whole site switched to Chinese. If I was a Mexican national, why would I want the site in Chinese, even if I was living there?
• nico 14y ago
  Here's a spreadsheet (on google docs) that pretty much fulfills the same need: http://goo.gl/RXSQk http://goo.gl/RXSQk You just enter any airport code in the country where you are from, and any airport code in your destination country, then you get the visa information. To OP: seems like there's quite a bit of information missing, you could try scraping it from the link on that spreadsheet
  • jlangenauer 14y ago
    That's actually using Delta's account for Timatic data. I doubt they'd look kindly on my scraping it.
• anonfunction 14y ago
  Awesome idea and it works great. What would be really cool is providing a public API. I'm working on building a site that list conferences and this would be really beneficial to incorporate.
• munimkazia 14y ago
  Amazing idea, but you probably need more data. I got married recently and we haven't got around to our honeymoon yet. I did a few queries which were relevant to me and they didn't have any information. (Indian citizen, tried cyprus, egypt, indonesia with no results. A few other results were helpful). Also, like someone mentioned, a map showing all the areas you can visit without visas would be much more helpful.
  • bsimpson 14y ago
    Indonesia doesn't give any results for a US citizen either: http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/us-citizen/travelling/indonesia http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/us-citizen/travelling/in... I was in Bali last year. You give them $25 at the airport and they give you a temporary visa, valid for 30 days. There's an ATM at the Hong Kong airport that pays out in US dollars, in case you need cash for the visa. Yes, the visa fee is 25 USD. Confirmation here: http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_2052.html http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_2052.html
  • devdas 14y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_Indian_citizens http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_requirements_for_Indian_ci...
• swatkat 14y ago
  Indian citizen --> Cambodia. Need visa; you can get an E-Visa or get it on arrival. http://www.mfaic.gov.kh/evisa/ http://www.mfaic.gov.kh/evisa/ Been there, done that :)
• pinouchon 14y ago
  North Korean citizens can live and work in North Korea without limit by virtue of their citizenship. I'm not so sure
• petercooper 14y ago
  "British citizen" is in between "UAE" and "US" citizens, based upon the UK, I suppose, but it would ideally be sorted in alphabetical order. That aside, providing more links to information on each result would be handy. There are too many details involved to really trust the results. For example, you can't travel to the US under the Visa Waiver Program if you've ever been arrested for anything even if no conviction resulted.
• acrooks 14y ago
  A few points I would like to mention about the interface: 1. Make it easier to find a country. Code an autocomplete textbox or something of the sort. 2. Keep the form on the page after searching. If a user wants to make a second search they shouldn't have to press the back button. 3. There are a bunch of links on the bottom that are very difficult to see with the background. 4. The body is perhaps too transparent. The text on your "About" page blends in with the background a little bit. Overall, it is a good idea and can be perfected with some simple tweaks. Good work!
  • saym 14y ago
    I've been toying with autocomplete fields recently. I came across this great article on improving the country selection experience. http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/10/redesigning-the-country-selector/ http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2011/11/10/redesigning-... jQuery UI Has a cool autocomplete plugin. I've used it recently, figured I'd leave a link for the curious. http://jqueryui.com/autocomplete/ http://jqueryui.com/autocomplete/
• meerita 14y ago
  Works neat. One question, why the background image? such a waste of resources and it doesn't add anything at all.
• TheBindingVoid 14y ago
  I wonder how you keep the visa requirements up to date. I've worked on a visa project before and I know that visa requirements change all the time and there's no central place to get those updates.
• seszett 14y ago
  I tried a few destinations and found no information for any of them (from Canada/France to China/Taiwan for example). Also, "French Guyana" doesn't have different requirements from the rest of France, it does not make sense to include it in the list while not including Martinique, Guadeloupe or any of the other French overseas regions. However, the overseas territories have different requirements (New Caledonia is included, but not French Polynesia). There's also an encoding problem with Monégasque and Burkinabé in the dropdown, and a mistake in the info page - it's Burkinabé, not Burkinabè. Also none of the place I mention in this comment seem to have information. Also, I see "French guyanese citizen" in the list (which doesn't exist) but no "French caledonian citizen" (which does exist) even though both places are lisited in the right-hand dropdown.
• nemetroid 14y ago
  I think you should change the message displayed when there's no data. Being "unable to confirm" whether a Swedish citizen needs a visa to visit Norway comes off as worse than "have not yet added a source". Particularly so in this example: both countries are part of the Schengen area, i.e. it is obvious that no effort (and nothing wrong with that!) has yet been made to add this information, rather than having been unable to find a source.
• phryk 14y ago
  Wow, thanks. That's one of the question I often couldn't find an answer for and thusly has kept me from travelling a few times. :)
• lewisflude 14y ago
  I'm a bit annoyed that British Citizen is filed under U (for United Kingdom).
  • crntaylor 14y ago
    You're "annoyed" with a useful service that you didn't even know existed until five minutes ago?
  • lmm 14y ago
    It isn't (though that was what I was expecting); "British" works. (Though it can't tell me whether I need a visa for Ukraine, so I'm not enormously impressed)
    • salvadors 14y ago
      If you actually need to know, rather than that just being an example: you don't. You used to have to fill in a form on arrival, but even that was abolished a year or so ago.
• _kai_ 14y ago
  FYI For "Taiwanese citizen to Germany" and to other states of the Schengen Area, no visa is required since 2011. http://www.taipei.diplo.de/Vertretung/taipei/en/01-Welcome-to-Germany/Visabestimmungen/Visabestimmungen.html http://www.taipei.diplo.de/Vertretung/taipei/en/01-Welcome-t...
• btw0 14y ago
  very clever URL for the resulting page
• baby 14y ago
  That's a great idea but it's not working for me. I'm french and visiting HongKong soon.
• josscrowcroft 14y ago
  Someone may already have said this: use IP2Country (or similar script) to determine the visitor's most likely location, then pre-select their nationality.
• glyphobet 14y ago
  This is great. Some thoughts: * It abbreviates "US" in "US Citizen" but not "United States". I would expect both "United States Citizen" and "US" (country) to work too. It uses "British Citizen" vs. "United Kingdom". Both "United Kingdom Citizen" and "Britain" should work too. * Using ISO 3166 country codes in the URLs would make them shorter.
• andrewhyde 14y ago
  "US citizens do not require a visa to visit Argentina. US citizens do not require a visa to visit Argentina, however US citizens must pay a "reciprocity fee" prior to arrival and present the receipt for doing so when entering Argentina. " You have to pay the reciprocity fee for a visa as of two years ago.
• gyardley 14y ago
  The non-standard select lists made this extremely difficult to use on iPhone.
• tvaughan 14y ago
  See also this iPhone/iPad app built by a friend: http://www.uquery.com/apps/Ji3W1/got-visa http://www.uquery.com/apps/Ji3W1/got-visa
• chipmunkninja 14y ago
  Humm ... Doesn't work for a huge number of things I entered: Have a lot of friends and family in Asia, and too many answers are "dunno, sorry".
• danellis 14y ago
  Here's why I don't understand the point of a site like this. I don't know anything about the site. I don't know if it's accurate. I don't know if it's maintained. I can't trust the information on it, so if I get an answer from it, in order to verify it I'll have to do whatever work I would have done if the site didn't exist. I've gained nothing.
  • chris_j 14y ago
    EDIT: As mietek points out below, the site does provide precisely this information. I guess that every answer that the site gives could link back to an authoritative source (such as a site run by the government of the destination country), in order to give you an opportunity to verify that the information is correct.
    • mietek 14y ago
      Isn't this exactly what the site does? If you're snarking on the parent poster, then your subtlety went over my head. Example: http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/polish-citizen/travelling/united-kingdom http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/polish-citizen/travellin... "Source: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/citizen/move-live/index_en.htm http://ec.europa.eu/justice/citizen/move-live/index_en.htm Last checked: 4 March, 2013"
  • sp332 14y ago
    Did you actually try it? It gives you a direct link to the relevant document, so you don't have to trust the site and you don't have to go digging.
• malvim 14y ago
  That is a great side project and one that has helped me already. Kudos for linking to the first-hand info. Now, I just found some info that you currently don't have on the site. I'll contact you via email with the link, but maybe you want to have a form for that?
• optymizer 14y ago
  I would also provide advice on where to apply for a visa. The "nearest X embassy" is not too helpful. Otherwise, great work!
• stevenp 14y ago
  This is really cool, and the info is super-useful. However, your SEO links at the bottom of the page make your site look unnecessarily spammy, especially because the color and font size makes it look like you're trying to hide the links, like someone might have done in GeoCities in the 90's. I understand what you're trying to achieve, but I think you could present it in a way that doesn't look so manipulative. If you make it easy to link to one of your pages, lots of travel blogs and sites will give you backlinks without you needing to create links to every possible combination on your site. Even the URLs look unnecessarily verbose: http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/us-citizen/travelling/afghanistan http://www.doineedavisafor.com/visa/us-citizen/travelling/af... Why is the word "travelling" in the URL? I assume it's because you feel strongly that you will get indexed more prominently if someone uses that word in their search. I wouldn't count on that. You'd do better to rely on the value of your content, instead of trying to artificially game the system. If the URL was http://www.doineedavisafor.com/united-states/afghanistan http://www.doineedavisafor.com/united-states/afghanistan, you'd still have friendly, easy-to-construct URLs, without the extra cruft.
  • josephjrobison 14y ago
    Where are the links on the bottom of the page that you speak of? Don't see them anywhere...
    • stevenp 14y ago
      I guess he took my advice. :)
• GFischer 14y ago
  Nice, works for Uruguay :) , small nitpick, it should say "I'm an" not "I'm a" where applicable (for example for Uruguay and other countries that start with vowels). It would also be nice to set defaults to U.S., and to try and detect the person's country from their IP or something. Small things, overall it's nice to have and it works nicely (I like the detailed explanations)
• nobodysfool 14y ago
  USA Citizen -> Tajikistan = "No information". Why present 'Tajikistan' as an option on the right side if there is no information in your database? Also, FYI, you can travel there and get a visa when you arrive at the airport. USA -> Russia = "No information" Come on... it's pretty well known you need to get a visa, it takes about 30 days, so it's not exactly easy, but I don't know anyone that's been denied.
• bratsche 14y ago
  This is pretty cool. How long did it take you to build, and what were your sources of the data? And also, just out of curiosity, what prompted you to create this project? Was it something that was just interesting to you personally? I've been working on a little side project, Magnum Opus (http://mag.numop.us http://mag.numop.us). It does things like orchestra job listings, allowing people to find local music teachers, and stuff for teachers to administer their studios (such as managing assignments and lesson schedules). Maybe once it gets further along I'll do a proper Show HN. :)