<p>The Handmade Network provides a place for project owners such as yourself
to showcase and record the development of their projects, and for
users to discover, follow and discuss these projects. This Monthly
Update Policy applies to your project if it doesn’t fit into a category listed under
“When the Monthly Update Policy Doesn’t Apply” below, and is
intended to encourage development and guard against your active or
complete project having to share web space with abandoned ones.</p>
<h2>What Constitutes an Update</h2>
<p>Outlined
are the ways a project owner, or a well-meaning member of the
project’s community, may contribute to a monthly update.</p>
<h3>Blog Post</h3>
<p>The most straightforward way to update the community with your progress
is with a simple blog post within the network. The length of the post
is not measured, as the network understands an individual may have
difficult months. Therefore, anything in the spectrum of a quick
message saying you had no progress, to a summary of a chat
discussion, all the way up to a full-blown detailed development log
would be considered a monthly update. Even with posts detailing your
inability to work for a month, looking back at your own development
history is an important exercise.</p>
<h3>Forum Activity</h3>
<p>Any activity in your project’s forum would satisfy the monthly update
policy. This includes contributions to any forum discussions from you
as the project owner and from members of the community.  </p>
<h3>Link to External Update</h3>
<p>YouTube videos, GitHub / GitLab repository links (e.g. to a recent commit),
Reddit thread, Twitter threads discussing the project’s current
state, your own personal blog posts, are a few examples of what would
work here. Such updates must be linked somewhere in your project page, blog, or
forums in order to qualify. As a reminder, having
a hyperlink in to your external blog in your signature or profile
links that visitors are expected to follow up on without further
prompting from you doesn’t count.  </p>
<h2> When the Monthly Update Policy Doesn’t Apply</h2>
<h3>Grace Period</h3>
<p>New projects are not required to provide updates until the month
following their approval. For example, if a project is posted in the
middle of March, they are not required to post any further updates
for March – the monthly update policy will go in effect for that
project in April.</p>
<h3>Personal Circumstances</h3>
<p>If the developer foresees not being able to provide a timely update this
month, or possibly even for a number of consecutive months, we invite
them to post a short update on their project blog letting their
audience know they’ll be taking a leave of absence. A reason need
not be supplied. Should you feel uncomfortable in doing so, an email
to <a href="mailto:webmaster@handmadedev.org">webmaster@handmadedev.org</a>
in private will let us flag the project as in hiatus and it will let
us deflect incoming questions about the project’s status in your
stead.</p>
<p>Although a blog post explaining the leave of absence will suffice, such an
e-mail is still appreciated, of course.</p>
<h3>Project Completion</h3>
<p>When the project owner is confident the project has entered a stage of
completion, a stage of maintenance with no further features, or it
has changed identity such that it is no longer considered the
original project, the monthly update would no longer be necessary.
Please advise us of this so that we may update the
status of your project, both for our bookkeeping, and for the
purposes of sorting projects by status.</p>
<h2>What happens if the Project is Inactive</h2>
<h3>First Strike</h3>
<p>If for any month there was no activity, without having notified the
network, the project owner will receive an e-mail within the first
week of the following month. No further action will be taken for that
month.</p>
<h3>Second Strike and Beyond</h3>
<p>If for any subsequent month there is no activity, without having notified
the network, the project will receive an e-mail within the first week
of the following month and will be flagged as ‘in-hiatus’ until
activity resumes. This will always happen for any inactive month
following the first strike of the year. At the start of a new year,
the strikes are reset, applying the first one first.</p>
<p>The project, while in hiatus, will remain as part of the project listings
but may be pushed down the list, and may not be considered as a
featured project while in this status. If it was a featured project
at the time of being flagged due to a strike, it will be removed from
the featured list.</p>
<h3>Three Months Inactivity</h3>
<p>If the project has been in hiatus for three months, without having
notified the network, it is considered dead and removed from the
project listings. E-mail <a href="mailto:webmaster@handmadedev.org">webmaster@handmadedev.org</a>
to re-instate it the first time this occurs.</p>
<p>The second time a project reaches this status, without having notified
the network, it will be considered permanently dead. At this point,
the project will need to be re-submitted.</p>
<h2>How to be Featured</h2>
<p>More active projects have a better chance at being noticed by members and
staff alike. Popular projects are more likely to receive votes
towards a monthly community featured-project slot, though community
interest can be piqued even by small or new projects if the project
is producing interesting content. Community-chosen featured-project
slots make up to 3 of the possible highlighted projects -- there are
also up to 3 staff-pick featured slots each month. The recipients of
these slots are at the discretion of the site staff, but you can make
your project shine by frequently and consistently reporting progress
on your project and interacting with the community.</p>
