Square Town for open-source projects: your docs favicon in town for free

Square Town (square.pov.town) is a favicon wall where each 1×1 square is free to claim and shows a site's favicon linked to its URL. For an open-source project, that means the docs site — or the GitHub repo, if that's the front door — gets a permanent, visible square that anyone can click through, that the community can "kiss" — publicly, countably — and that costs nothing at all — someone else pays $1 if they want the cell.

TL;DR for maintainers. Paste your docs URL and an email, click a cell, claim. Free, no card, no account, no logo upload. Your project's favicon sits on a live 3D wall; clicks are counted; anyone can kiss the icon for free (public, counted, and each one grows the tower). A maintainer with several projects can put each on its own square, side by side. Rulebook: How Square Town works — the complete rulebook.

The problem: open-source projects have nowhere visual to exist#

An open-source project lives as a repo, a docs site, a package registry page and a README badge. All text, all searchable, none of it seen. There's no logo wall you'd want to pay monthly for, and paying a launch platform for a library feels wrong. Meanwhile the maintainer of five small libraries has five docs sites and no way to show them together except a list on a personal page.

Square Town doesn't fix open-source funding or discovery. It gives a project a free spot on a shared map that people actually look at, and gives the community a free thing to do for the project that isn't a star.

What a free square gives you#

1. A permanent square for the docs site. Your project's favicon in the cell you chose, on a wall visible to everyone with it open, no expiry and no renewal. Forever*, where the asterisk is "unless someone pays $1 to evict you".
2. A counted click-through. Clicks go via /go/:id, are counted per square, and arrive at your docs tagged utm_source=square.pov.town&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=square. If your docs host has analytics, that's a referral row.
3. Kisses from your community. Anyone can click your icon and press 💋. It's free, it's public, it's counted, and each kiss adds a storey to the icon's tower. Tell your Discord or your release notes "kiss the icon" and see who does. There's a most-kissed leaderboard. This is the closest thing Square Town has to a star button, except each press visibly builds something. Kiss the icon explains the mechanic.
4. Views and clicks on a deed page. After claiming you get a secret deed URL showing views, clicks and kisses. $5 one-time adds per-day charts. Most projects won't need that; a project with a real docs site and a release cadence might like to see the spike after a release.
5. A tower that shows usage. Tilt the wall (ctrl+drag) and every favicon is a box as tall as its clicks plus kisses. A well-used project's docs site gets taller. It's a crude, honest, public signal.
6. Every project side by side. A maintainer with several projects — the main library, its CLI, the plugin, the docs — can put each on its own square, in adjacent cells, for nothing each. See Showcase all your projects as favicons; the multi-project playbook in Square Town for developers with many side projects applies unchanged.

How to do it#

1. Pick the URL that is the project's front door. Usually the docs site (docs.yourproject.dev), because it has its own favicon and is where you want people to land. The GitHub repo works, but its favicon is GitHub's — every repo in town would look the same. If the project only has a repo, consider whether the README is really where you want a click to go.
2. Make sure that site serves a favicon. Most static-site and docs generators do; check the browser tab. No favicon means a clown emoji in town and a public Hall of Clowns entry until you fix it — How to add a favicon is a five-minute job.
3. Open square.pov.town, click an empty cell. Only the central 16×16 is live at launch; the gold Throne is the 4×4 in the middle and its surrounding ring can't be built on. Cells near the centre get seen most.
4. Paste the URL and an email, claim. Free, no card, done. Use a project address for the email — it's where the deed can be sent and where an eviction warning goes. Square Town fetches the favicon via Google's favicon service.
5. Save the deed URL somewhere the project owns. A private note in the org, a maintainers' channel pin, a password manager entry. Not just your own browser's "My deeds" button — projects outlive maintainers' laptops. No accounts means no password reset; the mailed copy is your backup.
6. Tell the community. A line in the next release notes: "We're in town — kiss the icon." Kissing is free, and every kiss makes the project's tower a storey taller.
7. Repeat for sibling projects, in adjacent cells if they're free.

Tips#

• Pick a spot near the Throne if visibility matters more than permanence. The centre gets looked at and gets evicted. A few cells out is calmer. How to pick a good square covers the trade-off.
• Kiss it, and get others to. Kisses are public and counted, and each one grows the tower a storey — a project with any community at all should have a skyline to show for it.
• Don't be a clown. The docs site needs a favicon. If your generator's default favicon is the generator's logo, replace it — otherwise you're advertising the generator.
• Pay for the analytics unlock only if you'll look at it. $5, once, per square, for per-day charts. Useful around releases; not needed for a stable library.
• Save the deed URL at the project level, not the person level.
• Use the API if you like dashboards. GET https://square.pov.town/api/state returns every listing's domain, clicks, views and kisses as JSON. Filter for your domains and you can put the numbers on your project's status page. See Square Town API — read the wall, claim a square.

What it won't do#

• It won't help your docs rank. The wall is a WebGL canvas and clicks are 302 redirects; there is no backlink and no link equity.
• It won't bring you contributors, or promise any traffic. Clicks are counted; volumes aren't promised.
• It won't stop an eviction. Anyone can take a free square for $1. The next person pays $2. If a rival project evicts you, that's the game — and it's public.
• It won't recover a lost deed. No accounts. Store the deed URL somewhere the project can find it.
• It won't take a logo upload or a bigger tile. Favicon and URL only, 1×1 only. The Throne (4×4, $100 intro price, doubling per eviction) is the single exception, and it's a stunt, not a plan.

FAQ#

Should I use the GitHub repo URL or the docs site?#

The docs site, if you have one. Its favicon is your icon; the repo's favicon is GitHub's, so every repo in town looks identical. Use the repo only if it's genuinely the project's front door.

Can the community do anything besides click?#

Yes — kiss the icon. Anyone can click your square and press 💋; it's free, public and counted, and each kiss grows the icon's tower a storey. There's a most-kissed leaderboard.

Who should hold the deed URL for a project?#

The project, not a person: a maintainers' channel pin, an org password manager, or a private note. There are no accounts, so a lost deed can't be recovered.

Does a square on Square Town count as a backlink for the docs?#

No. Clicks are counted redirects through /go/:id, and the wall is a canvas element. There's no link equity or ranking benefit.

Can a maintainer put several projects in town?#

Yes — one square per URL, free. Claim adjacent cells and they form a block. Each square has its own deed and its own view/click/kiss counts.

Can we spend project sponsorship money on this?#

That's between you and your sponsors, but the square itself is free; the only spend would be an optional $5 for per-day analytics, or evicting someone ($1 minimum), which is below most people's threshold for asking.