You've decided to make the leap and move your software to an open-source repository. You may be doing this for reasons of openness - to encourage a community of developers to evolve around your software - or economics - to outsource the maintenance of your source code repository, email lists, wiki, blog and other services to a third-party who offers these for free.

You've taken the big step: your software is now hosted in an open-source repository. You can rest easy, right? Well... no. A repository is like a well-engineered machine, it requires care, attention and nurturing so it can continue to deliver the best performance. Treat it well and it will treat you well!

When you’re focused on developing the next big thing, it’s easy to forget to tell people about it. The awful truth is that a lot of great software fails simply because no one knows that it exists.

Promoting software takes time and resources that a lot of projects lack, but just because you can’t put together a multi-million pound marketing campaign, doesn’t mean that you can’t take a few easy steps toward creating a presence for your software. We present our five top tips on promoting your software.