Open source projects=Keeping tracks and maintaining an open source Repository

Open source project makes it possible for developers to contribute with their ideas and techniques as the source code of the software/project is out for the public to use, refine, define, modify, and can be redesign with so ever way the contributors deems it fit provided the founder of the project accepts it and ready to merge it to the project through pull request.

Keeping tracks and maintenance of a repository is a major role as it keeps The project lively and active,
This can make other developers serious and have that enthusiasm to make their own contributions.
Making a repository active for contributors is a key role to make such project a successful one.
Either you are the owner of such project, contributors, groups,dev Teams/ as it is important and beneficial to the
Developer community on the latter or in the future.

Maintaining of a repository can be difficult on its own part if the founder or the maintainers of the project are not adhere to the project they manage with lack of proper documentation, irregular updates and not sending feedback to the contributors who are not paid for their several contributions through pull request and are 93 percent responsible of shaping the whole projects to another dimension for the end users through their crucial contributions.

WAYS TO KEEP TRACK AND MAINTAIN A REPOSITORY

Maintaining a public Repository of an open source software is crucial in order to see such project grow,
Being the founder and a maintainer,
there are some sacrifice and responsibilities you have to make to your project and to the whole developers community,
a project manager, the opportunity to interact with different developers would boast your efficiency around the project and gaining of experience to handle and maintain such project.

You as a maintainer Maintaining a repository is important though it requires hardwork, focus,determination and lots of sacrifice,
You as a maintainer should be kind, and approachable as this rewards you with much more experience and allows you to grow as a maintainer, founder or a contributor,

1 Rewarding Contributors with any means E.G The Utopian Bot

Utopian website was designed for this sole purpose Rewarding contributors for their contributions,
The more you welcome and reward contributors for their efforts the more they will be back with more contributions

Utopian.io allows contributions push to your GITHUB Repository, and contributors get rewarded for their efforts

**what about if my project is not on github Respository but other open source repository like crowding? **

you should also do same, make the project a rewarding one not only on getting paid make users see a reason to be part of the project,
make them believe they are lots to benefit in helping the project and spending time with code and programming,
draw them close, acknowledge their effort, make them know their contributions might be merge if its a good request.
get people to Start contributing on your project (and you should try rewarding them like the utopian.io website in every way you can )

expose them to the project make them know the all and all of the project,
take them down different lane, never be tired of answering questions from the users,

Include a CONTRIBUTING.MD file on the top level of the repository, outline the step by step Procedures developers had to follow in order to start working on the project,
A good file will explain to Them what needs to be done and act as a guild on what they can do to improve the project,
And a README.MD file that can help Developers understand how they can contribute to get their code merge to the project successfully through pull request
Try to Make Contributing to that project a Rewarding and fun one.

keep the codes of each pull request readable through out the project and always announced it as this can Make anyone jump on it and work on contributing to the growth of that project.

2, FAQS Of The Project

generally before introducing contributors to your project try as much as possible to walk them through different lane of the project,
put them through with the FAQs of the project(FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS) as this would put them through on the project and will make them understand what the project is all about,

Make them know software Issues

release notes of detected bugs on every release update of that project as this will guild them into knowing what they might expect on the software,
on your tutorial about the project make the audio audible and let the video provide more than enough information to the viewers and listener so as to make them get every details they need about you project.

Information Of the Codes

the user needs to know about the Api,
provide them with the API Reference so they could know how to lurk up with information of the project
let them know what they might expect in the future,
ideas, suggestions and lots more always be approacheable to the dev involve and contributing with

3, Useful Documentation from project Owners

always provide the users with easy documentation, as the will expand their understanding of the project and enlarge your contributors and the rate of contributions,
an easy software documention makes the source code or software easy to use
you may want to write down the documention before writing down the code,
with the written codes,try keeping few documentations of the files
Top directory,

Along with your code, there are a few files of documentation that you’ll want to keep in your top-level directory:

always walk users through with the goals of the project,
and make them understand better the reasons of all this all,

To get more contributions to your open source project on the CONTRIBUTING.MD include the licence of the software of your project, this encourage lots of users who will definitely take your project as a genuine one.

audience get attracted with the kind of documentations they prefer,
you can get audience with the kind of documentations you make
the kind of documentation you make attracts audience,
you can try to make your documentation into different form to attracts different users and a larger audience

in writing a documentation make it professional and informal, write you documentation as if you need collaborators who you want to help speed up the project, anyways this was the first intention as you are looking for contributors with high potentials to make pull request for your open source project

4, Appreciate contributors of any Kind

if their is an issue with the open software ask the user who filed such issues some questions in a good manner or direct him to the CONTRIBUTING.MD as this show how professional you are in handling and maintaining the Repository.

users asking questions about your project shows a good sign that they are interested with you project and might add values to your project,

anytime a user reports an issue try to thank him and be kind in directing him to where they could get more information's about that issue, grow you community if the issue reports comes frequently you can use this on your own advantage,
you can quickly update such issues on the CONTRIBUTING.MD
and this would make it look professional and engaging for the users who have been following the project for a while,
it also makes the user's see such project as a serious one,
show kind gestures to any users reporting issues as you the project owners might get that frequently,
it will help build and increase the growth of the community to your project.

5, Organizing Project Issues Again and Regular updates

Try as much as possible to organize Issues, as this will always keep your project up to date and more engaging to the users,

if a reported issue doesn't match the areas or irrelevant to your project,
still appreciate the users hard work and efforts shown.

organize issues and remove the ones that are not relating to your project, keep the valid ones and dispose the invalid ones

be kind and always show appreciation when you interacts with the contributors of you project or when interacting with the community,
this would payoff someday though the duties and sacrifice of a project owner is not that easy but being gracious and following above steps will be alot beneficial , at the end it will let the project grow with large community ahead ready to make the project better

6, Recognizing contributors,

try as much as possible to make and keep list of every contributors, even if it's just a contribution of little ideas about the project or just a user contributing about typos, this will definitely lead into higher contributions later in the future of the project development

also provide spaces for users to interact with them self's as this could lead into high collaboration between users and this could lead into greater good for the project benefits,
when users talk often about your project it means your project will grow and will receive a massive contributions from contributors,

7,Promote ,Explain, Blog about your project,

And Lastly to Project maintainers
you can ask several contributors to help with your projects and let them know how rewarding and fun it is for them contributing to your project,

you can also promote you Project to the general public or through media forms, through blogging,
and putting down all details about the project on wiki and on most website forum of developers community.

i Observe
i suggest
i document
I Report

---

Posted on Utopian.io - Rewarding Open Source Contributors

---