# Square Town for open-source projects: your docs favicon on the wall for $1

> How open-source maintainers use Square Town, the $1 favicon wall: a permanent square for the docs site, counted clicks, and community kisses that keep it alive.

Source: https://square.pov.town/for/open-source-projects

Square Town (square.pov.town) is a favicon wall where each 1×1 square costs $1, one-time, 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" to keep alive, and that costs less than the coffee you drink while triaging issues.

> **TL;DR for maintainers.** Paste your docs URL, click a cell, pay $1. 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, resets the 90-day fade). A maintainer with several projects can put each on its own square, side by side. Rulebook: [/how-it-works](/how-it-works).

## 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 $1 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 $1 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 $2 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 it resets the 90-day timer after which an unkissed icon fades to grayscale. 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 it wears off. [Kiss the icon](/glossary/kiss-the-icon) explains the mechanic.
4. **Views and clicks on a deed page.** After buying 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 click count. 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 a dollar each. See [Showcase all your projects as favicons](/blog/showcase-all-your-projects-favicons); the multi-project playbook in [Square Town for developers with many side projects](/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 on the wall 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 on the wall and a public Hall of Clowns entry until you fix it — [How to add a favicon](/blog/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, pay $1.** Stripe, card, done. 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 recovery.
6. **Tell the community.** A line in the next release notes: "We're on the wall — kiss the icon." Kissing is free, and it's the one thing that keeps the square from fading.
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](/blog/how-to-pick-a-good-square) covers the trade-off.
- **Kiss it, and get others to.** 90 days without a kiss and the icon goes grayscale — still owned, still linked, but visibly neglected. A project with any community at all should never fade.
- **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.
- **Buy 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 [/api](/api).

## 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 $1 square for $2. The next person pays $4. If a rival project evicts you, that's the game — and it's public.
- **It won't recover a lost deed.** No accounts, no email. 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 on the wall 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 it resets the 90-day fade timer. There's a most-kissed leaderboard.

### What happens if nobody kisses our icon for 90 days?

It fades to grayscale (💔). It's still yours and still linked; it just looks neglected. One kiss from anyone restores it.

### 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 on the wall?

Yes — one square per URL at $1 each. Buy 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 at $1 one-time (plus an optional $5 for per-day analytics) it's below most people's threshold for asking.