Promoting your project

There are many different ways to promote your project, and this is by no means a comprehensive list.

Project Summary Page

Your project summary page is often the first impression anyone has of your project. You should, at a minimum:

• Provide a project summary statement. State what your project is in 70 characters or less. See this blog post for some tips on writing your summary statement. This is what we use when we tweet about your project.
• Have an icon. A distinctive icon makes your project stand out in a list.
• Describe in more detail what your project does. See this blog post for some tips on writing your project description.
• If appropriate, provide one or more screenshots showing off the more exciting parts of your product. People respond much more quickly to pictures than to text.
• Write a bullet list of main features. Highlight what makes you distinctive.
• Release early, release often. Frequent releases state loudly that your project is alive.

Project Blog

SourceForge projects have the option of a blog. You may already have a blog for your project, but we encourage you to post to your project blog on SourceForge as well - particularly when you do a new release. This brings your release to the attention of the Community Team, which then triggers various promotion activities on our side, including mentioning you on Twitter.

Project Web Site

Whether you host your project website on SourceForge or not, link to it from your project summary page.

Discussion Lists and Forums

It would help if you had a place where users of your software could talk. If you don't have a discussion forum, you are telling people that you're not interested in what they have to say, and they'll find another project that is. Discussion forums are a great place to figure out what your users want in the product, find new developers who want to help you, and get a pat on the back for a job well done.

Open Source is about community. From good communities comes good code. Be sure to give your community a place to talk with one another.

SourceForge Help Wanted

If your project is looking for new developers, either to rejuvenate a project or fill specific gaps in the team. Visit our help wanted forum where you can find like-minded creators that are willing to help out with your project.