iFixit

iFixit and Make to Part Ways

Three years ago, we started working with Maker Media—the inspiring people behind Make Magazine and Maker Faire—to see what an open source, community-driven DIY project database would look like. And so, Make: Projects was born—a combination of iFixit’s community technology and Make’s library of great projects. Our goal was to build a Wikipedia of how-to projects, a central repository where ideas could flourish and instructions could get better over time.

Parts from Dozuki Make:Projects

Since we launched the site, it has become a popular resource. Make: Projects has more than 3,000 projects. And the site was used by half a million people in December alone.

It is with sadness that I announce Make: Projects will be moving off of iFixit’s Dozuki community platform on February 28. The projects will still be accessible and URLs will be redirected, but it will no longer be in a wiki format. This means that the Make: Projects API will shut off permanently, and any of Make’s HTML embeds used across the internet will stop working.

In addition to the new host of content on makeprojects.com, we’ve posted all of the projects on archive.org. They will remain in their native oManual format, which we developed in conjunction with O’Reilly, so you can use and share the data freely.

I’m more committed than ever to the belief that DIY should be an open source venture. We all stand on the shoulders of those who came before, and every time we share what we know, we make the world just a little bit better.

We are makers and we are fixers. Information on how to make, build, and fix things in the real world wants to be free. We want to help make that possible: this week, we’re making our publishing software, Dozuki, free for anyone to host open source, community-driven instruction manuals.