How to Add a Project Page

Adding a new project listing to open-austin.org involves creating a new markdown file in the _projects/ directory of Open Austin's GitHub repo, and adding a screenshot of your project to the assets/images/projects/screenshots/ directory. (Confusingly, the _projects/ directory is not the same thing as the projects/ directory.) If you're not comfortable enough with GitHub to post the files yourself, feel free to give the files to @mscarey instead of uploading them through GitHub.

Markdown file

Here's an example of a good project listing. This file is appleseed.md in the _projects directory.

---
title:        Texas School Discipline Lab (Appleseed)
description:  Policy guides, research materials, and maps about injustices in the "school to prison pipeline"
access_at:    http://www.texasdisciplinelab.org/
project_at:   https://github.com/open-austin/texasappleseed
type:         website
status:       in development
categories:   [ education, justice ]
contact:      Ellen Stone <estone@texasappleseed.net>
cfa_stage:    beta
date:         2018-10-15 00:00:00
thumb:        appleseedthumb.png
screenshot:   appleseed_map.jpg
---

The "access_at" field should include the location where users will find your project. If your project isn't online anywhere yet, just leave this field blank.

The "project_at" field is where your team members or volunteers will go to work on your project. Often this will be a GitHub page.

The "type" field is used to tell us what kind of end product you're producing. It could be a website, a mobile app, a survey, a report, an in-person event, or something else.

The "status" field should usually be "ideation", "in development", "deployed", or "archival". If you've started work on the project but you haven't finished, "in development" is most common.

The "categories" field is for keywords that you think fit your project. We don't have a predefined list of allowed keywords.

In the "contact" field, include the name and email of a "project champion" who can respond to inquiries about your project. If you prefer, you can use an organization's email address instead of an individual's.

The "cfa_stage" field is used to describe how much progress you've made on your project. The allowed keywords are "experiment", "alpha", "beta", "official" and "outside". Most projects begin as an "experiment". An explanation of the terms is on our project process page.

"Date" is the date when you started the project.

The "thumb" field is for the filename of a small image with a logo or other representation of your project. You must also upload that image in the directory assets/images/. However, the current site design doesn't use thumbnails, and we're only collecting these for use in redesigning the website.

The "screenshot" field is for an image that shows your project in use.

Adding a Screenshot

Take a screenshot of your project and resize it to a width of about 600 pixels. Then upload the screenshot to the assets/images/projects/screenshots/ directory of the open-austin.github.io repository. Be sure the filename exactly matches the name you include in the markdown file. In the markdown file, include only the filename itself, not the name of the directory.