How Can an Indie Maker Show Closed Projects Without Damaging Their Portfolio?

An indie maker can show closed projects safely by moving them into a clearly labelled archive, removing dead calls to action, linking only surviving public evidence, and describing what was built without pretending the product is still available.

Removing every closed product erases useful proof that you ship; leaving it among live products misleads visitors. The archive is the honest middle. It records the project as part of your work while telling customers, recruiters, and collaborators not to expect an active service.

Which closed projects are still worth showing?

Keep a closed project when it demonstrates relevant craft, domain knowledge, or completion, and remove it when no truthful public context remains.

A retired app with a surviving store page, repository, documentation, or product write-up can still be valuable. A name with a broken URL and no explanation cannot. Relevance matters too: an old experiment should not crowd out current proof merely because it once existed.

You do not need to publish revenue, failure analysis, or a dramatic post-mortem. Status, scope, and evidence are enough for an overview page.

Keep: relevant work with a verifiable artifact.
Archive: unavailable product with honest context.
Remove: misleading, confidential, or unprovable entry.

What is the fast way to archive projects in IndieShow?

The fast way is to open the IndieShow dashboard, move the project to Archived, update its description, and replace or remove any dead destination.

IndieShow separates Archived from Shipped, Built, Building, and Working on, so the old project remains visible without competing as an active product. You can also reorder it, change the logo, tag, metric, and description, or delete it when keeping it no longer helps.

Preview the public page before saving the final wording. The archive label should do the status work; the description should explain the product and your contribution, not bury the visitor in a closure story.

Claim your IndieShow pageStart by claiming a handle; after that, the dashboard shows the $15 one-year pass and $30 lifetime option See the editor and publishing options.

What should an archived project description say?

It should say what the project was, what you built, and where valid evidence remains, using past tense when that avoids ambiguity.

For example: “Scheduling prototype for independent tutors; built the booking flow and dashboard. Archived.” That is more useful than “failed startup” and more honest than leaving a present-tense “book now” message.

Only retain a metric if it is accurate and meaningful after closure. Never replace a missing result with an estimate or imply continued usage that you cannot confirm.

Where should archived projects appear in the portfolio?

Archived projects should appear after active and shipped work unless a specific old project is uniquely relevant to the visitor’s purpose.

The page should first answer what you can offer now. The archive then shows history and range for people who continue scrolling. Within the archive, order by relevance or strength rather than closure date.

Audit the archive periodically. Links decay, domains change hands, and once-public material can disappear; a maintained archive is credible because its destinations still match its labels.

For the wider ordering strategy, read: the indie hacker portfolio guide · show multiple side projects

How does IndieShow turn closed work into useful history?

IndieShow turns closed work into useful history by separating it from live projects while keeping its name, description, logo, and valid proof on the same maker page.

That structure demonstrates that you built and finished things without asking a visitor to guess whether they can still buy or use them. Your current projects remain the leading story.

With IndieShow, closing a product becomes a status update in the dashboard, not a reason to rebuild or erase the entire portfolio.