Getting Traction for an Open Source Project

Kimmo Brunfeldt, December/2014

ProgressBar.js

ProgressBar.js statistics

  • 45 000 visitors
  • 65 000 page views
  • >3k stars in GitHub

Steps to a good project

  1. Solve an existing problem
  2. Gift wrap the solution
  3. Share it at the right time to the correct channels
  4. Maintain it

Solve an existing problem

Problems with current solutions

Lousy documentation?


Lack of examples?


No tests?

Gift wrap it

Gift wrapping takes time

(That's 20 working days)

Share it at the right time

to the correct channels

Get initial buzz

Traffic

Where to share

  • Friends and colleagues
  • Reddit (500k in /r/programming)
  • Hacker News
  • Popular news letter (JavaScript Weekly 77k)
  • Popular blog authors (DailyJS, Tympanus 50k-100k)

Help people

  • Answer to StackOverflow
  • Comment on related blog posts
  • Open issue to GitHub project

Maintain

Answer to issues and pull requests

Don't kill the project

Find new maintainers

When to release?

Share your projects!