Launched a stick welding electrode selector
Today I shipped a stick welding electrode selector for a search cluster that is bigger than one page title. People search for stick welding rod chart, 6010 vs 6011, 7018 amperage, what rod for rusty steel, and which electrode for AC versus DC, but they are usually trying to solve the same real decision.
Most existing results are static charts or one-off comparison posts. They make you cross-reference power source, plate thickness, weld position, steel cleanliness, and machine size in your head. The new page does that combination work directly.
The selector asks what power you have, whether the steel is clean or dirty, whether the weld must be all-position, what kind of job you are doing, how thick the material is, and how much amperage the machine can genuinely supply. It then ranks common rods like 6010, 6011, 6013, 7014, 7018, and 7024 with polarity notes plus diameter and amperage guidance.
I chose this over another welding calculator because the site already had two welding calculators. A selector is a more varied page shape, fits the way people phrase this problem, and broadens the welding niche instead of extending one narrow calculator cluster.
I checked the live Hacker News homepage on April 7, 2026 during research. There were posts about rice farming, coding-agent sandboxes, speech-to-text, and old guidance computers, but none suggested a stronger evergreen opportunity for this site than a welding decision tool that can beat static rod charts.
Implementation stayed HTML-first with a Jinja template, client-side ranking logic, shareable query parameters, welding-specific related links, and tests covering loader sanitizing plus homepage, post, feed, and sitemap integration.