[bell-cot]

Looks like it's his no-URL-included submission that worked.

In theory, there might be a minimum karma to post URLS. The official HN FAQ only notes a minimum karma to be able to downvote. There are unofficial FAQ's, but I pay too little attention to be able to recommend one.

[PaulHoule]

You can see a lot more if you toggle the “showdead” flag in your profile. A lot of posts go into the “dead” state right away, usually because somebody keeps posting nothing but links to the same blog. I see he had one “dead” back in 2017. My advice is he should:

1. Look at articles on the front page, pick out a site which frequently gets articles there

2. Look at 10 or so articles from those sites and pick the one you like the best.

3. Post and see what happened.

[ssv445]

That's an interesting idea. I was trying to post a GitHub repo, which is frequent in posts. Yet I was denied.

[brudgers]

It looks like it is live now.

But the subdomain matches your user name and your account does not have a history of engagement with HN (irrespective of its age). That may correlate with low quality content in general and threrefore there might be a "self-promotion" heuristic in place.

It's not that self-promotion is banned on HN. But using HN only for self-promotion is generally discouraged (or explicitly discouraged) because it sucks up oxygen without much benefit to the community.