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Apr 26, 2013 

What we can do to help promote your project

One of our featured projects this week – DavMail – sent us a very kind comment about their time at SourceForge:

Without the public visibility and reputation of SourceForge and the reliablility of your services, DavMail would probably still be an unknown piece of code used by a single user (well, maybe a few users) to access company Exchange server…

And in addition to sharing that with you, we wanted to take a moment to tell you some of the things we can do to help you promote your SourceForge project.

Project of the Month – The Project of the Month is listed at the top of the SourceForge front page for an entire month, and is chosen by popular vote. The candidates for that ballot are selected from projects that were weekly featured projects in the previous month.

Weekly featured projects – Every week we feature 9 projects on the front page of the website (in addition to the Project of the Month). These projects are chosen from projects that have made a release within the last week. So, the more often you make releases, the greater chance you have of making that list. You should know, however, that a LOT of projects make releases every day, so the competition is pretty stiff there.

Enterprise Directory – If your project is backed by a for-profit vendor, or if your project is specifically geared to the Enterprise, the Enterprise Directory might be for you. If you want your project to be listed, tell us what project, and we’ll evaluate it to see if it meets the criteria, and get back in touch regarding next steps.

Guest blog posts – Speaking of blog posts, we’re always looking for guest content for the main SourceForge blog. If you want to write something about your project, we would be glad to post it to our blog. Guest blog posts should be community-centric, not a pitch for your company or non-open-source project.

Monthly Mailing – Every month we send out a community newsletter which gets delivered to about 1.5 million subscribers. In it we cover site news, community news, and various projects. If you’d like to get something about your project into the newsletter – a help wanted item, perhaps, or a brief profile of what you’re doing – contact us at the communityteam email address. The same caveats apply here as for guest blog posts.

Twitter/Facebook/Google+ – Every day we tweet/facebook/G+ a few dozen of your release notices. We get these from your SourceForge blog entries, so making a quick mention of your releases on your SourceForge blog is a great way to get some extra publicity. However, if you made a blog post somewhere else, please feel free to send email to communityteam@sourceforge.net with a URL, and we’d be glad to put it in our regular social media schedule.

Help Wanted – The Help Wanted forum is a great place to get the word out about specific needs that your project has – whether for testers, designers, or developers. Be as specific as possible about what you’re looking for, so that potential contributors know what they’re getting into. And be sure to mention exactly how you want them to get in touch with you.

If there’s anything else that we can do for your project, please get in touch. We’re here to make your SourceForge experience better in any way that we can.

Apr 5, 2013 

Linking to resources hosted elsewhere

If you have different components of your project located at different places, you might want to provide simple navigation to those components. That’s why we provide an “External Link” tool to let you easily add a link to your main project navigation menu.

Go to Admin → Tools, and you’ll see the ‘External Link’ tool there.

Screen Shot 2013-04-04 at 12.46.07 PM

Click that, and you’ll get a dialog for configuring the link.

Screen Shot 2013-04-04 at 12.46.58 PM

This dialog uses the standard terminology we use for all of our tools. The ‘Label’ is what will appear in the navigation menu, and the ‘Mount Point’ is an identifier for your personal reference. After clicking save, click ‘Options’ in the tool badge, and add the URL of the site to which you wish to link.

Screen Shot 2013-04-05 at 10.16.07 AM

In this way, you can provide a convenient link to your main website, an off-site Mercurial repository, a discussion forum, or whatever else you like.

Feb 8, 2013 

Searching for tickets

Note: This article refers to projects on the new SourceForge platform. You should upgrade if you haven’t already.

If you’re searching your project’s tracker for a ticket, you have a single text field in which to enter your search, and you may be unaware of the rich syntax that’s available for crafting searches.

For the full details, click the “Help” button on any search results page:

Screen Shot 2013-02-08 at 3.25.47 PM

But the purpose of this blog post is to show you a few simple examples so that you’re aware of what’s possible.

First, if you just enter a keyword, you’re searching for that word in the title or description of a ticket. While that may be sufficient if you only have a few tickets, it quickly becomes unmanageable.

The next thing you need to know is what fields you can investigate. Here’s the complete list:

User who owns the ticket – assigned_to
Labels assigned to the ticket – labels
Milestone the ticket is assigned to – _milestone
Last modified date – mod_date_dt
Body of the ticket – text
Number of ticket – ticket_num
User who created the ticket – reported_by
Status of the ticket – status
Title of the ticket – summary
Votes up/down of the ticket – votes_up/votes_down (if enabled in tool options)
Votes total of the ticket – votes_total
Imported legacy id – import_id
Custom field – the field name with an underscore in front, like _custom

Any field can be included in a search query. So if you wanted to search for tickets about ‘fishing’ that aren’t closed, you can do:

summary:fishing AND !status:closed

You can combine more complex searches by using parentheses:

summary:export AND !(status:closed OR status:wont-fix)

If you use labels (aka tags) on all of your tickets, this can also be a great way to find the tickets that you want:

labels:community AND (status:open OR status:in-progress)

If you want to know what your project worked on in a particular week, you can use a mod_date_dt search to look for tickets that were modified in that time range:

mod_date_dt:[2013-02-04T00:00:00Z TO 2013-02-08T23:59:59Z]

Finally, if you use a particular search a lot, you can save it for later use. Click on “Edit Searches” in the left sidebar, and then “Add Bin” at the bottom of that page. Give it a name, and put your search terms into the ‘Terms’ field.

There’s more you can do with searches. As I mentioned above, click the ‘Help’ button for the docs. For the exhaustive docs, see the Lucene query syntax tutorial on SolrTutorial.com.

Jan 29, 2013 

January 2013 Community newsletter: DOSBox is project of the month; Platform Updates; New Year’s Resolutions; Help Wanted;

If you missed the community newsletter, you can sign up for it on our website.

Happy New Year! Here’s hoping that your 2013 is prosperous and productive, and that time for Open Source finds its way into your new year’s resolutions.

DOSBox is Project of the Month

We’re proud to announce that DOSBox is the January 2013 Project of the Month. It also has the distinction of being the first project ever to receive this honor twice, winning it in May 2009 as well.

DOSBox emulates a full x86 pc with sound and DOS. Its main use is to run old DOS games on platforms which don’t have DOS (Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X).

We spoke with two of the development team on IRC, and that entire interview can be seen on our blog, at http://sourceforge.net/blog/potm-201301/ and you can see all past POTM recipents at http://sf.net/potm

Please also take a moment to vote for the February project of the month, at http://sourceforge.net/blog/vote-potm-201302/ (Note: vote is now closed.)

Site Updates

We’ve had a great month for updates to the developer platform. Since the last mailing, we’ve added a number of important features, or improved existing ones. Of course, you’ll only have access to these improvements if your project is using the new Sourceforge. If you haven’t upgraded already, now’s the time. Go to https://sourceforge.net/p/upgrade and press the upgrade button to get on board.

Linking your project to your Twitter stream – http://sourceforge.net/blog/your-projects-twitter-stream/ This is the first in a series of updates the platform that will let you more easily publicize your work via Twitter and other social media channels.

Side-by-side diffs – http://sourceforge.net/blog/platform-updates-side-by-side-diffs/ We’ve added a side-by-side view to the diff tool when reviewing changes in your SCM. This makes it really easy to tell at a glance what changed and where.

SVN was upgraded to 1.7.7 – http://sourceforge.net/blog/svn-upgraded-to-1-7-7/

Menu cleanup for projects with lots of tools – http://sourceforge.net/blog/platform-update-menu-cleanup/ Projects with large numbers of code repositories, ticket trackers, or other tools can now consolidate tools of the same type into a single menu item, and thus avoid navigation menu clutter.

Ticket tracker reporting customization – http://sourceforge.net/blog/platform-update-tracker-columns Project admins can now customize what columns are shown in their ticket tracker list view, adding (or removing) several columns that were not available in this view before.

As always, we encourage you to vote on tickets in the tracker – https://sourceforge.net/p/allura/tickets/ – to influence what will be worked on next.

New Year’s Resolutions

It’s not too late to make some New Year’s resolutions, and maybe SourceForge can help you with some of them. You can update your resumé with some great templates (http://templates.openoffice.org/en/taxonomy/term/158) and Apache Open Office (https://sourceforge.net/projects/openofficeorg.mirror/), automate your home lights with MisterHouse (http://sourceforge.net/projects/misterhouse/) or rearrange your living room with SweetHome3D (https://sourceforge.net/projects/sweethome3d/).

And getting involved in an Open Source project is a great New Year’s resolution. Use TortoiseSVN (https://sourceforge.net/projects/tortoisesvn/) to ease the learning curve into participation, and check out our Help Wanted forum (https://sourceforge.net/p/forge/helpwanted/) for ideas of where you might be able to plug in.

For more ideas of using Open Source in 2013, see some of our resolutions on our blog at http://sourceforge.net/blog/new-years-resolutions/

Help Wanted

With over 300,000 projects and almost 3.5 million users, it can be a little difficult to match up a developer with a project. The Help Wanted forum (https://sourceforge.net/p/forge/helpwanted/) is one attempt to get projects in touch with developers and vice versa.

If you want to work on something, have a look to see what projects are looking for help. Or, if your project needs something, posting there should be part of your search process.

The EasyObject project is looking for people to help them with testing. EasyObjects is a PHP5 and jQuery web application framework. You can engage with the community at https://sourceforge.net/p/easyobject/discussion/testing/

The superbios project (https://sourceforge.net/projects/superbios) is looking for developers. You can respond to their posting at https://sourceforge.net/p/forge/helpwanted/programmers/thread/e664c976/

And numerous developers are looking for projects that need their particular skills. (https://sourceforge.net/p/forge/helpwanted/developers/) If your project needs help, start there, and be sure to check back often to follow up.

Top Growth Projects

Here’s the projects that have seen the fastest growth in the last month. There’s some familiar ones, and a few we haven’t seen before. Thanks to all of them for being part of the SourceForge community.

Media Player Classic – Home Cinema: Home of Media Player Classic – Home Cinema. This project is based on the original Guliverkli project, and contains additional features and bug fixes (see complete list on the project’s Website). http://sourceforge.net/projects/mpc-hc

Classic Shell: Classic Shell adds some missing features to Windows 7 and Vista like a classic start menu, toolbar for Explorer and others. http://sourceforge.net/projects/classicshell

Whited00r: A custom iOS firmware for older devices. http://sourceforge.net/projects/whited00r

Megacubo: Megacubo is a IPTV tuner application written in PHP + Winbinder. It has a catalogue of links of TV streams which are available for free in the web. At the moment it only runs on Windows (2000, XP, Vista and Seven). http://sourceforge.net/projects/megacubo-br

avidemux-mswin: Avidemux builds for Microsoft Windows http://sourceforge.net/projects/avidemux-mswin

InstagramDownloader: Instagram Downloader ( Public Accounts) http://sourceforge.net/projects/instagramdownlo

Open Broadcaster Software: Free and open source software for media streaming. http://sourceforge.net/projects/obsproject

Linux-on-android: Working to getting a range of Linux distros running on android http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxonandroid

DVDStyler: DVDStyler is a cross-platform free DVD authoring application for the creation of professional-looking DVDs. It allows not only burning of video files on DVD that can be played on standalone DVD player, but also creation of individually designed DVD menus http://sourceforge.net/projects/dvdstyler

calibre: calibre – Ebook management http://sourceforge.net/projects/calibre

MediaPortal: Turn your PC into a very advanced MediaCenter/HTPC http://sourceforge.net/projects/mediaportal

WinDS PRO: Pack de Emuladores de Game Boy (Color) (Advance) y Nintendo DS. http://sourceforge.net/projects/windspro

UltraStar Deluxe: singing game http://sourceforge.net/projects/ultrastardx

aMSN: MSN compatible messenger application http://sourceforge.net/projects/amsn

Bodhi Linux: Bodhi is a minimalistic, enlightened, Linux desktop. http://sourceforge.net/projects/bodhilinux

StrongDC++: This project allows connecting, file sharing and chatting in Direct Connect and ADC networks. http://sourceforge.net/projects/strongdc

FreePOPs: FreePOPs is a webmail to pop3 conversion daemon. It is extensible to support other webmail using the scripting language LUA. See the homepage for supported webmails. http://sourceforge.net/projects/freepops

Lightweight Java Game Library: The Lightweight Java Game Library (LWJGL) is a solution aimed directly at professional and amateur Java programmers alike to enable commercial quality games to be written in Java. LWJGL provides developers access to high performance crossplatform libraries such as OpenGL (Open Graphics Library), OpenCL (Open Computing Language) and OpenAL (Open Audio Library) allowing for state of the art 3D games and 3D sound. Additionally LWJGL provides access to controllers such as Gamepads, Steering wheel and Joysticks. All in a simple and straight forward API. http://sourceforge.net/projects/java-game-lib

Open Nautical Charts: Open Nautical Charts produce seacharts for everybody. This charts are usable (offline) with several ship-plotters and Navigation-equipement on board. kap. KMZ WCI. Png Jpr png-cal For example with Open CPN. http://sourceforge.net/projects/opennautical

gpw: Guv’nor Portable Workspace aims to bring many of your favourite applications in a ‘portable’ format, so you can use them anytime, anywhere… directly running from a USB removable device. http://sourceforge.net/projects/gpw

In Closing …

Thanks for being part of the SourceForge community!

If you want more frequent updates than this newsletter, there’s several places where we make those updates. We’re on Twitter – http://twitter.com/sourceforge. We’re on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/sourceforgenet. We’re on Google+ – https://plus.google.com/u/1/102470258162390195749/posts. And if you follow the opensource and software Reddits, http://www.reddit.com/r/opensource and http://www.reddit.com/r/software respectively, you’ll see the occasional post from us there, too.

And our blog – http://sf.net/blog – is where we post longer articles about our projects and our platform.

Keep hacking!

The SourceForge Community Team
communityteam@sourceforge.net

Jan 24, 2013 

Github Projects Downloads are Welcome

As you might have heard few weeks ago Github has disabled their file upload feature. Of course projects hosted on Github can still serve source code downloads, but they can no longer upload files that are separate from versioned files.

Since Github is deprecating the Downloads tab, Github recommends few options to projects that need to host binary files. We are happy to see our name among those suggestions, and we thank Github for the mention.

SourceForge as a trusted partner for open source welcomes you to distribute your releases via SourceForge even if your code is developed elsewhere. By distributing your releases at SourceForge, you’ll get the following advantages.

Free Unlimited Bandwidth

Reduce overhead and provide a better experience by using the largest free managed global mirror network. We serve 4.8 million downloads per day, and we move over 2 PB data monthly.

Analytics

Follow the trends that enable you to create better software. Learn more about where your project is popular, and what operating system your users use.

Premier Visibility

Reach more users and gain market share in the open source landscape. 41.8 Million unique visitors come to us every month, your chance to improve your project outreach.

A Trusted Name in Open Source

Since 1999, thousands of projects have chosen SourceForge to host not just their source code, but also their project communities. You’ll be in great company.

Get Started

If you want to provide downloads for your Github project, you’ll need to follow these steps:

1) If you don’t already have one, create a SourceForge account.

2) Create a project. You’ll want to uncheck the Git tool, since you’ve already got that, but you can add whatever tools you don’t already have elsewhere.

3) On your new project page, click the Files link and upload your release.

4) Link to your files page from your Github wiki, so that folks know where to go to get releases.

Feel free to contact us if you have any new release in the pipe, we are here to help you through our blog and our newsletter. Drop us an email at communityteam@sourceforge.net

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