bDAO Website S6 Retrospective and S7 Planning

General
1

Title: bDAO Website S6 Retrospective and S7 Planning
Author: MantisClone#2619
Edited by: Bananachain🏴 (Nanner)#6171, DidierKrux.eth🏴#1559
Date Created: Jan 18, 2023
Working Document: 2023.01.15 bDAO Website S6 Retrospetive and S7 Planning - Google Docs

Purpose of this Post

The purpose of this post is to gather feedback from the BanklessDAO community about if and how the Website Project should continue in Season 7. To that end, it provides a retrospective on our activities in Season 6 and poses 3 key questions (and 1 bonus question)

The Website Project maintains the BanklessDAO Website

Key Questions

  1. Is it worth having a separate BanklessDAO website? Or should the https://bankless.community URL simply route to the BanklessDAO Notion?
  2. Should the website continue as a project? Or be absorbed into a department?
  3. Should the website use a content management system (CMS) like Wordpress, Drupal, or Ghost instead of the current static site generator (SSG)?
  4. Bonus: Should we create a legal entity to limit liability for whoever pays to host the website or contributes content to it?

S6 Retrospective

I took over as Project Champion of the Website in Season 6. I spent a total of 40 hours on the project focused primarily on project management. In addition to my efforts, we received contributions from other BanklessDAO members: @Jasu helped triage bug reports, @BOBOtoTHEmoon moon implemented many bug fixes, and @Yanneth.eth implemented a few bug fixes as well.

Goals

According to the Season 6 Funding Request, the goals for Season 6 were:

  1. Churn through the outstanding bugs
  2. Create dedicated Guild and project page templates
  3. Configure more Web3 tooling and dashboards under subdomains of the website
  4. Link out to our DAO’lationship partners
  5. Mature and perfect our change process
  6. Add GitPOAP to our site to reward contributors
  7. Reimburse S4 & S5 hosting costs

Accomplishments

  • Completed Goal #5: Mature and perfect our change process:
  • Completed goal #7: Reimburse past website hosting costs
  • Progress on Goal #1: Churn through the outstanding bugs
    • We created DeWork tasks to track each bug.
    • We fixed 13 content bugs and 1 technical bug (out of 53 bugs reported). See our DeWork Board for details

We also completed several tasks that were not on our original goals list:

  • We requested and were granted funding from the Grants Committee mid-season because our budget was accidentally excluded from the Season 6 budget.
  • Added Google Analytics to the Website (See the analytics report below).
  • Updated the Multisig signers and Vercel owners. My business entity, Mantis Data Solutions LLC, now pays for the website hosting.

Budget Utilization

  • We started Season 6 with 12,000 BANK.
  • The GC granted us 645,000 BANK on Dec 19, 2022
  • We spent 78,000 BANK so far. 67,000 BANK was used to reimburse hosting costs from April - December 2022.
  • We expect to spend another 100,000 BANK in Season 6 fixing bugs.
  • We expect to have about 460,000 BANK left over at the end of Season 6.

Analytics Reports

Google Analytics was enabled on January 1st, 2023 so we only have two weekly reports since then.
2023_01_07_Weekly_BanklessDAO_Website_Analytics.pdf
2023_01_14_Weekly_BanklessDAO_Website_Analytics.pdf

Highlights:

  • The weekly average daily active user (DAU) count on the 07th was: 49
  • The weekly average daily active user (DAU) count on the 14th was: 70
  • About 25% of traffic comes from the US and 8% from China. Germany, United Kingdom, India, Hong Kong, and Canada all account for 3-5% each.
  • 50% of new users find us via organic search. 25% find us via direct links. And 20% find us via referral.

Google Analytics is blocked by Brave browser and ad-blockers, so the DAU numbers may actually be higher.

Unfortunately, the current Google Analytics implementation cannot differentiate our pages so we don’t have valid page visit data. I believe this can be fixed but I haven’t found time to investigate or implement a fix yet. There was also a discussion in Discord with DidierKrux about potentially switching to MixPanel.

Question 1: Continue a separate Website or Route to Notion?

Is it worth having a separate BanklessDAO website? Or should we get rid of the BanklessDAO Website and make the bankless.community URL route to the BanklessDAO Notion?

What is the website’s purpose and why is it needed?

The BanklessDAO website is arguably the most visible piece of Bankless real estate outside of the Bankless podcast and the BanklessDAO Twitter account. It poses a unique opportunity to streamline the introduction and onboarding of new members to the movement and provide a public-facing information hub about BanklessDAO’s Projects, Departments, Guilds, and other content. The website directly impacts how the public perceives bDAO and BANK token value.

Today, I believe that the website should strive to be a simple information hub that introduces BanklessDAO to the public and provides links to dive deeper into the community. It should lend credibility to BanklessDAO as a legitimate decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).

I think the website is uniquely capable of analytics to measure our engagement over time, reveal the demographics of people interested in BanklessDAO, reveal how people find us, and reveal which parts of BanklessDAO they’re most interested in.

The website could be a powerful tool to direct the flow of new users to the top of our contributor funnel.

Recommendation

I strongly recommend that we continue to maintain a separate website. The website is for public-facing communication. The notion is for internal coordination.

0 voters

Question 2: Project or Department?

What is a Project?

According to the BanklessDAO Constitution

projects act as objective-based initiatives. They are product or service-oriented value streams designed to make an impact and accomplish some defined end. Anyone can start a project. Projects may seek funding by submitting proposals through the DAOs governance process. Each project has a project champion who is uniquely responsible to report and account for that project’s status and expenditures.

What is a Department?

According to bDIP 04 : Departments:

Departments are operation-critical units of BanklessDAO. The qualification test for a department is that if it does not exist, the DAO cannot function properly or may cease to exist!

Department Candidates

  • Marketing Department
  • Ops Department

Recommendation

I recommend that the Website Project be absorbed into the Marketing Department and included in the Marketing Department’s budget planning.

  • Continue BanklessDAO Website as a Project
  • Absorb BanklessDAO Website into the Marketing Department
  • Absorb BanklessDAO Website into the Ops Department
  • Something else (Please describe in the comments)
0 voters

Question 3: Should the website use a content management system (CMS)?

Current Website

The BanklessDAO Website currently does not use a CMS. Rather it is a Static Site Generator (SSG). It has 1 dynamic component that displays recent polls from Snapshot.

History

tl;dr In Season 2, BanklessDAO used to use a CMS: Ghost Pro, but chose to switch to a Static Site Generator (SSG) in Seasons 3.

In Season 2, the BanklessDAO website used a combination of Ghost Pro, a popular blogging platform, plus custom extensions for web3 wallet functionality, hosted in Vercel. It was described by the Website Project Season 4 Proposal as “a loose collection of blog post-type pages”. The old website is still hosted here: Old BanklesDAO Ghost Site.

In Season 3, A new design was developed with the intention of “creating a comprehensive and unified presentation of the DAO as a whole” and “creating a palette upon which the DAO could creatively build its brand identity”, paraphrased from the Website Project Season 4 Proposal.

In season 4, the new website design was implemented with the following goals, paraphrased from the BanklessDAO Website Redesign Feedback:

  1. Switch to a custom static website and eliminate reliance on Ghost Pro.
  2. Decentralize hosting using the FRAG stack (Fleek, Radicle, Akash, and Gnosis Safe + ENS)
  3. Refocus the website as a springboard to other parts of the DAO rather than a destination for content.
  4. Pursue integration with the Content Gateway Project which would serve as the CMS.

Goals (1) and (3) were completed successfully. Goals (2) and (4) were abandoned.

In Season 5, there was no budget request, no budget was allocated, and as far as I know, no work was completed.

Static Site Generator (SSG) vs Content Management System (CMS)

Quoted from Static Site Generator vs CMS Which One to Choose and Why? - ThemeXpert

  1. ​A Static Site Is Faster Than a CMS​: When a visitor sends a request to a dynamic site, it engages the database to show the result while a static site generator doesn’t need to join the database. As a result, we can say that static site generator is far better than a CMS.​
  2. A CMS Is More User-Friendly Than a Static Site Generator​​: Both static site generator and CMS provide the opportunity to create a site without having technical knowledge or coding knowledge. ​But keep one thing in mind that, CMS can use the page builders whereas static site generator can’t use page builders.​
  3. ​Static Site Generator Is More Customizable Than CMS​: Customizing CMS is more complicated than static site generator as CMS is extremely time-consuming even for experts; ​moreover, it is a painful and error-prone task. CMS/Dynamic site takes a lot of time to customize files, style sheets, and JavaScript codes. On the other hand, static site generator is easy to customize.

Also, Static Site Generators can more easily integrate Analytics tools that bypass ad-blockers. Doing this with a CMS may be possible but would likely involve a lot more effort.

Hybrid approach with Headless CMS

Quoted from Static Site Generator vs. CMS: Which is Right for You? | ButterCMS

Headless CMS allows you to make the most out of both worlds. Headless CMS is a specific kind of CMS that consists of only the "back-end” part of a “usual” CMS. You’ve got the control panel, integrated settings, and content management but no front-end at all. Instead, Headless CMS gives you access to a set of APIs that allow you to retrieve its content and do whatever you want with it. This includes using it as a data source for an SSG!

Recommendation: Notion as a Headless CMS

I recommend we connect our existing website with Notion as a Headless CMS. This idea was proposed by @DidierKrux. I like this idea because:

  1. BanklessDAO already makes heavy use of Notion
  2. It would allow non-technical contributors to directly edit the content on the website
  3. It would allow us to keep our existing SSG website, leaving the door open for creative design in the future.

Reference: Using Notion as a headless CMS for our blog

  • Go back to using a full-stack CMS like Ghost
  • Continue the existing website without a CMS
  • Continue the existing website with Notion as a Headless CMS
  • Something else (Please describe in the comments)
0 voters

Bonus Question: Liability

Whoever pays to host the website or pushes the content to production may be liable for the content. One notable example is the Invest page. It’s unlikely that decentralized hosting would mitigate liability concerns. Maybe the Website needs its own legal entity to limit the liability of individual contributors.

Currently my legal entity, Mantis Data Solutions LLC is paying to host the website and it makes me uncomfortable.

I don’t have a recommendation for this question.

3 Likes
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Okay, for me Website needs to be a project and here is my why: :smiling_face:

Quicly overview: in order to manage a website correctly you need technical knowledge, coding, content management, ui-ux design, seo optimization and technical and non-technical sem, writting generation among others. I really feel that this is not just about the marketing team and that while they can give a very good insight into the part of how to improve the content and the traction funnel. In itself, I recommend continuing as a project that houses different members of different guilds and giving more commitment to this. It is something that involves everyone.

In fact, managing bug tickets and problems with Mantis li, I found that most of them did not need a marketing incident, they needed someone with experience in websites and layout who would detect what the problems were from an audit.

In the following stages, I propose that if we move forward with a reverted home page, improving the navigation of the nav bar with drop downs and if we involve the marketing team in the construction of wireframes and content, there must be technical advice. In the companies and organizations in which I have worked, marketing helps the website sector, but this is not marketing itself, since knowledge covers more areas.

2 Likes
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I should have clarified this in the post: I don’t think that absorbing the website under the marketing department means that it stops requiring a wide range of skills, both technical and non-technical. Rather, it’s an acknowledgement that the website is critical to the DAOs operations and needs to be funded as such.

I agree with @Jasuu that it will continue to need both technical and non-technical contributors for all the tasks she mentioned:

technical knowledge, coding, content management, ui-ux design, seo optimization and technical and non-technical sem, writting generation

I’d also add project management to to that list. I think that even under the Marketing Department, the website will still need a project champion, for lack of a better term, to drive the vision and execution.

(original post deleted because I wanted it to be a reply to @Jasuu 's comment)

2 Likes
5

I think the Website should remain a project, and only after achieving its original goals and defining how the maintenance and the continuation of the website will be handled then handed over to a department, or even creating a new one to cover the needs of the website. It will probably requiere collaboration between various departments.

6

I feel that what we have to improve is in financing so! :star_struck: :star_struck: and in the road maps so that we can continue attracting talent and founding foundations as a project in that case, since if that is what we need, it is not necessary to be absorbed by a department . As a project we provide a point where many talents from other guilds and departments can work on a goal and with a specific output, which can count on the support of various departments of course! And I love the idea! We can work with marketing and still maintain an autonomous structure since I also think we should work with other departments! :smiling_face: :smiling_face:

Website is a window for all of us! and we need to also take seriously his finances :blush:! and thats becomes my second point, is not fair that you with your LLC continue paying and hosting this… and doing proporsals for pay that… i mean,…you are using your money. We need to improve :blush: the hosting and mantain payment as a must too :smiling_face:

7

I agree with @MantisClone on his observation. Absorbing the website development into the Marketing Department doesn’t mean that the MD will take over and interfere in each and every task. It is about a Guild or a Department having ownership of an important initiative. Anyone with the required skillsets can come and be a part of the website development, finalisation and activation process. The MD will be the Department under whose realm this project will fall. Also from a broader POV, the website is an external facing asset of bDAO and all external facing bDAO assets (social platforms etc.) are managed by the MD. And Mantis sums it up very well in the end, when he says that the website will need a Project Champion. I will be very open about my views here so that it doesn’t seem like I am blowing the MD’s horn here in the forum. If the website indeed needs a Project Champion (which Mantis is 100% correct in identifying), the next best place for the website is the PM Guild. Can the PM Guild project manage the website to completion and activation?

8

Thanks @MantisClone for leading the website project.
Glad to see it moving to the right direction :+1:

There is still a lot of work to do, so being his own project makes sense to be his own project in the short term.
Once it’s more stable, require less involvement in development, it would make sense to me to merge with the marketing department, which would then be able to coordinate most of the effort.

Notion ressources:

Content liability is a serious problem in a DAO, I hope the Legal Guild can provide some help with that. :pray:

1 Like