If this all seems a little too ambitious, I've also put together a top 6 wishlist of for developer websites.
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Good names
Please don't name your program either super generic names or something totally unique. "Chess" is not okay nor is "Shredder". Conversely, yED and QupZilla say nothing about the program.
Also, please do a brief search to see if someone else is using the name. At worst, just put your name on it (e.g. "Dave's Search").
Make it Survivable
- Home page - whenever possible, use a free service that won't go away if you walk away from the project. I am constantly updating webpages to archive.org and similar destinations because someone stopped paying their bill for a domain name.
- File server - for the same reasons as above, please use Softpedia or other major download distribution service.
Things to put up front
- Clear intro - Don't just say what a program does, say who would use it and in what situations. What problem does it solve?
- Changelog - a great many programs really don't know how to make this easy to track down. Softpedia has a great system, but you can use any of 20 different simple blogging services to catalog this.
- Help file - I've noticed over time that even a little bit of an introduction goes a long way. Even if you just a readme text document list a few steps for use, that seems huge. Also, unless you're doing a video introduction, please include it inside the download, not on a separate webpage.
- Source code - if you distribute the source, please don't hide it under subdirectories or some weird nested link. Ideally use a service like Github or just include the source in the download.
Licensing
I realize this is a huge and complex topic but here are a few suggestions:
- Focused - Put some thought into it and don't change it frequently. Pick a standard license as non-standard ones generally get ignored. If you're not sure, just do copyright with a standard disclaimer.
- Extraware If you include adware/bundleware/spyware/etc. please be clear about it. If you have pro features, give a good breakdown on the differences between free and pro versions.
- Patents - Make sure any licensing includes some notice about patents. I've spoken to lawyers about this and it's an ongoing mess in software, business, and beyond.
Walking Away
- Hand-off - Consider handing it off to another developer who might be able to keep it alive.
- Into the Wild - Consider posting the source code somewhere. The importance of your work having a chance to live on is greater than danger you'll be ridiculed for poor coding practices.
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Did I miss anything? What do you wish freeware developers knew?
