---
title: No Description, Website, or Topics Provided
subtitle: Solitary on purpose or not?
date: '2018-07-14'
slug: bad-marketing
---

Usually I tend to be conservative on actively marketing my own products, but I have also seen people who seem to be totally unaware of marketing, which is a pity in my eyes. A very typical example is a GitHub repo that has no description, website URL, or topics, which looks like this:

![No Description, Website, or Topics Provided](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/163582/42730615-8b35a0be-87be-11e8-8095-f891230134be.png#border)

I sigh a sigh every time I see it. I don't know what the repo owner is thinking. If one just prefers hiding oneself in public, the lack of more information makes sense, otherwise I think a description and a README are the most basic elements you should provide in a GitHub repo. You probably don't expect everyone to read your source code to know what this repo actually does.

Better, you should provide a URL to a website associated with this repo. It could be a documentation website, or other types of websites. Even if the repo is the special and conventional `*.github.io` (meaning GitHub Pages), you should provide a link explicitly so that visitors can simply click it. I have tried to copy the text `*.github.io` and paste it in my browser's address bar many times to open such websites when a repo does not provide an explicit and clickable link (yes, I'm this curious to read other people's websites). Sometimes I even have to open the `CNAME` file in the repo to figure out the website URL. I don't think many people are as curious as me in these cases, so unless you want to hide yourself intentionally, please consider providing a description and a website in your GitHub repo (click the Edit button and fill out the two text fields).
