Stylight handbook

The inner workings of a product company

View project on GitHub

How to clone the Stylight handbook

The Stylight handbook is open-source on github, so you are welcome to copy it and create something similar.

Why clone the Stylight handbook?

Perhaps you are an entrepreneur and want to start a business. You don’t want to run it as a traditional company, and yet you don’t want to invent a model from scratch. In that case you can start from our model and modify it to fit your needs.

Although we happen to produce a fashion and lifestyle product, there is nothing in our model that is specific to the fashion industry.

What’s the licensing model?

The Stylight handbook is licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International. This means you are welcome to edit the text anyway you wish, even for commercial purposes, as long as you attribute the original text to us, and keep the license, so that others can fork off of your ingenious changes. But go read the license, it is well worth the effort!

Can I keep Stylight as an organization name?

No. Stylight is a registered company and brand in many countries. You need to pick a different name and change it throughout your clone of this handbook.

How do I create my own copy of the Stylight handbook site?

Simplest way is to fork the handbook repo on Github. Something like this:

  1. Surf to http://github.com/stylight/handbook.
  2. Press the “Fork” button on the top right somewhere (here’s a direct link.
  3. You should now have your own copy of the Stylight handbook.
  4. Start editing. The articles are all in the _docs folder, and the table of contents is in _data. Try opening _docs/index.markdown, and press the little pencil icon on the top right to edit it, and then commit.
  5. After your first commit the site will be auto-published at http://YOURNAME.github.io/handbook (or whatever you decide to call your repo)

Once you’ve cloned the handbook, it’s no longer the Stylight model, it’s your model! Stylight is just your ancestral aunt. Change stuff as you like. Rename the company. Remove pages that aren’t relevant. Change the content. Replace the pictures. Go wild.

But wait, there’s ALOT of content here!

No worries, once you’ve forked it you can remove the stuff you don’t need. Another option is to skip the techie stuff (cloning and forking), and just steal the bits you like anyway.

Either way, please do mention on your website that your model is derived from (or inspired by) Stylight handbook, and summarize the key similarities and differences. Spread your learnings!

This handbook was heavily inspired by the Valve handbook for new employees and was originally forked from the Crisp DNA site.

How can I help improve the Stylight handbook?

Glad you asked, cuz Aunt Stylight always wants to improve.

If you have an improvement suggestion (big or small) you can:

  • Fork our repo (as described above), make changes, and issue a pull request on our repo. If we like your change we will pull it back into our version.
  • … or File an issue (pick a suitable label to the right)

We appreciate all feedback.

How do I ask questions or give feedback?

If you have a question feel free to File an issue on the handbook repo (pick the “question” label to the right).

If you have a general comment (for example “Wow, Awesome!”) then the best place is probably on the blog post announcing this launch.

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