{"id":3616,"date":"2023-08-19T09:52:08","date_gmt":"2023-08-19T15:52:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/?p=3616"},"modified":"2023-08-19T09:52:23","modified_gmt":"2023-08-19T15:52:23","slug":"ending-a-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/archives\/3616","title":{"rendered":"Ending a side project"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I think side projects are great. They let you experiment, scratch and itch, and learn in a safe and low pressure environment. They can raise your professional profile too and are great fodder for a blog. Of course, they also take precious precious free time.<\/p>\n<p>These all mean that it is entirely okay to shut down a side project when it is no longer serving you.<\/p>\n<p>The side project could be:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>less fun than it used to be<\/li>\n<li>taking more time than you want<\/li>\n<li>an area you used to be interested in but are no longer<\/li>\n<li>related to a job you have left<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In all of these cases, you have NO obligation to keep doing something simply because you used to.<\/p>\n<p>So, shut it down.<\/p>\n<p>How you do so depends on what the side project is. A blog should be treated differently than a webapp which should be treated differently than a library.<\/p>\n<p>There are some things you can do for any side project:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Set an date to end your efforts&#8211;this is something for you internally.<\/li>\n<li>Run through the finish line&#8211;keep up the good work.<\/li>\n<li>Announce the end and what it means for the project.<\/li>\n<li>Thank everyone who helped you.<\/li>\n<li>Optionally make it available for a while longer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What a &#8220;while&#8221; is depends on the effort and money required to make the project available, as well as how useful it is in the end state. A library can live on GitHub forever, especially if you archive it so it is clear that it won&#8217;t be getting updates from you. It&#8217;ll still be available to fork and may be useful to others. A directory of local restaurants offering patios, on the other hand, will decay in usefulness pretty quickly as businesses start and close.<\/p>\n<p>Ending a project is just as natural as starting it. Make sure you do it right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I think side projects are great. They let you experiment, scratch and itch, and learn in a safe and low pressure environment. They can raise your professional profile too and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-side-project"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3616"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3618,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3616\/revisions\/3618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}