New Monero Website

What the proposal is about:

I propose rewriting the Monero website to enhance its functionality, improve user experience, give it a modern and polished appearance and ensure it aligns with current web standards. This project aims to revitalize the online presence of Monero, making it more accessible and informative for both existing community members and newcomers.

I will be using the Astro framework to build the website, which is a Javascript static site generator that allows for the use of components and other modern web development features. This framework has been chosen for its flexibility, performance, and ease of use, making it an ideal choice for this project. It is also zero-javascript by default, which aligns with Monero's privacy and security principles. It should be accessible with Javascript disabled via Tor and I2P. The website will not require Javascript to function, but it could be progressively enhanced with Javascript for users who have it enabled.

The website will be designed to be responsive, ensuring optimal viewing and interaction across various devices, including desktops, tablets, and smartphones.

Regarding the design aspect, this website implements the Figma design that was made roughly three years ago by Hammermann09, announced in this Reddit post. The design is mostly done at 90% but there are still some tasks to address, such as the mobile menu, the blog page, the documentation, SVG images, etc. I am not a web designer and I would need one somehow.

I already have a working prototype of the website that can be seen here, hosted on my GitHub at https://github.com/Janaka-Steph/monero-website.

Who will complete the proposal?

I am Janaka, senior web developer with extensive experience in cryptocurrency. These past recent years, I have mainly been involved into Bitcoin and the Liquid network. I then discovered Monero and its community, and I am now eager to contribute to this project. I decided not to try hiding myself, so you can easily look up my GitHub profile at https://github.com/Janaka-Steph to see my previous work and contributions.

Why it is important for Monero and the community:

A well-designed and functional website is crucial for Monero's growth and community engagement. It serves as the primary gateway for users to access information about Monero, including its features, use cases, and latest developments. By investing in a website rewrite, we can enhance Monero's visibility, credibility, and user experience, ultimately fostering greater adoption and community involvement.

Milestones and projected timeline:

1. English Responsive Website
   • Develop a functional responsive website with all pages in English.
   • Functional blog, documentation, and content pages (all the screens in the Figma design).
   • Ensure validated, accurate, up-to-date content, with all links working.
   • Seeking active feedback from the community on Matrix #monero-site channel.
   • Opening issues on the GitHub repository for feedback and bug reports everytime I have doubts or see room for improvement.
   • Eventually adding new content if needed, after community review via Matrix and GitHub issues.
   • Complete Figma design and address various design tasks (not done by me directly).
   • Estimated Completion: 3 months

Funding:

I am willing to dedicate 20 hours per week to this project, at a $30 per hour rate. Using the current XMR/USD exchange rate of $147 per XMR, the cost of the project is estimated as follows:

Working 3 months, 20 hours/week, means 20 hours * 4 weeks * 3 months * 30 USD = 7200 USD = 49 XMR (more precisely 48,9795918367). To complete this first milestone I will need the help of a designer. My estimation for the remaining design tasks is around 15 hours of work. Anyone interested in completing these tasks can contact me directly or show up in the Matrix #monero-site channel.

The total cost of the project is 49 XMR.

Expiration date for the proposal:

If this proposal is not funded or completed by December 2024, the allocated funds will be released to other proposals or the General Fund. This ensures timely progress and resource allocation within the Monero community.

We've seen some great examples from you, thank you for taking up this task.

regarding SVG images: https://github.com/monero-project/monero-site/issues/2274

Do you have experience with translation + continuous integration platforms (weblate, other)? what would be your plans for getmonero here? Is my assumption correct that everything will be machine translated and given the once over? there may be an issue here with the rules reg. translations https://ccs.getmonero.org/what-is-ccs/

Documentation is an on-going issue to resolve, what are your plans here because its possible that docs could be moved off site and onto its own monerodocs instance, again, this is an on-going issue.

Ok to convert SVGs to something else, like webp. I should try hosting the website on Tor to check if other limitations exist.

I have experience with translation and Weblate. I did translations for different Monero projects on it. I also know that the translation team had to reorganized itself, there have been issues with Weblate for several months or more, don't know if it is solved now. The content in the current website and the new one should mostly be the same, so I can just use the already made translations. For the rest I can use some AI model like ChatGPT 4, it usually works really well. Everything will have to be reviewed obviously. I am open to other ideas.

Regarding documentation I know that this is an ongoing issue, but I didn't really understand what is the problem about having it on the website. There are three Figma screens for this, which I can implement. I like the idea of having it all centralized on this website. An other debate is about the search input. Should we have it as a progressive enhancement, it works for people enabling JS (99% of people?), but doesn't work if disabled, but doesn't disturb navigation. If it's too risky to have any input and JS processing because of the environment the website will be hosted, we can skip them, it is really not an essential feature.

My worry is that the translation and transition milestones depend heavily on efforts of others to be completed and time estimates could be inaccurate.

Weblate was has only just came back online, yesterday i believe, and gathering enough reviewers to push translations to site quickly doesn't seem plausible at this moment.

Are there any examples of Astro written sites with Weblate for translations that we can learn from?

Implement necessary scripts for website functionality.

Forgive my layman questions here, but for milestone 1, wouldn't there need to be some kind of content management system / scripts built upon in the beginning to parse mark down files? e.g. so blogs can @moneropedia_articles and such or do i misunderstand milestone 1?

Do not edit the proposal based off of my opinion / wait for feedback but how would you feel about milestone 2/3 being removed from this and coming back with a follow up should everything go to plan for milestone 1?

Astro has built-in support for Markdown, it doesn't need any custom logic https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/markdown-content/ I mentionned "scripts" because I heard that the current website has a few scripts for checking dead links and things like that. But I don't really know.

Are there any examples of Astro written sites with Weblate for translations that we can learn from?

I don't know any

I agree we can just remove milestones 2 and 3 and see that later, will be simpler.

By the way, milestone 3 in my mind is putting the website to production, fixing the remaining things (which is not clear now, but I just expect that there will be things to fix), and maintenance for some time (I forgot to mention that, and I don't have a clear proposal, but of course I will be around for maintenance).

Are there any examples of Astro written sites with Weblate for translations that we can learn from?

https://github.com/WeblateOrg/weblate/discussions/8424 might help, although Markdown is now supported, but under development https://docs.weblate.org/en/weblate-5.3.1/formats/markdown.html so better stick to po4a for now.

Very glad to see someone put a proposal together for this.

Please take a look at our previous work and use it as you like. A fair amount of thought and community discussion went into it.

https://github.com/moneroguides/getmonero.org

Awesome thank you! I will see what I can take from it.

Much needed. Will be supporting this.

Idk about the "translation" part. The Weblate server is usually down and unstable. Localization support, Right-to-left/LTR etc is what needs to be focused on more.

Make it easier to contribute to the site, as you can see https://github.com/monero-project/monero-site/blob/master/resources/about/index.md, it is very confusing https://github.com/monero-project/monero-site/tree/master/get-started , https://github.com/monero-project/monero-site/tree/master/resources etc.

Is it possible to support a different font per locale? It is important for languages like Persian and Arabic because default fonts like Serif etc sucks and they need to use a free and open source font like Noto Sans Arabic, which is more readable and close to actual typography.

The font I have chosen is Inter, which should support all languages.

I believe that AI translation works very well, we don't have to use Weblate, we don't have to do translation like we did in the past, before AI.

No, AI translation is very shit. Please don't claim it "works very well" if you haven't translated many projects/lack linguistic skills. Because I can very much say that AI writes better code than any dev and we can just build Monero site with AI .

I say it because I use it everyday. ChatGPT 4 works well for me, some others are not too bad (Claude, LLama3). I think this debate about how to translate the website is never ending, so nothing is done. I would just remove this milestone.

I think this debate about how to translate the website is never ending

It is actually much easier, you just need competent reviewers and ban 100% machine/AI translation with 0 effort into editing/improving those.

I would just remove this milestone.

I already suggested replacing the milestone with "Localization support" which is very vital to grow Monero audience.

For me, we should use AI to translate everything, then ask for review. Quickest way to get the job done. And sorry to hurt the feelings of professional translators but yeah time has change.

I don't really know what you mean by "Localization support". Things like dates?

For me, we should use AI to translate everything, then ask for review. Quickest way to get the job done. And sorry to hurt the feelings of professional translators but yeah time has change.

Idk why you are insisting into shoving AI into this discussion after me and plowsof already outlined issues with AI translation, example https://bounties.monero.social/posts/5/1-700m-translate-bitcoin-monero-atomic-swaps-guides-to-chinese-mandarin.

I don't really know what you mean by "Localization support". Things like dates?

Right-to-left/LTR https://rtlstyling.com/posts/rtl-styling decent guide. And, the process to conveniently use the website with Weblate.

Hmm ok but you talk about "replacing the milestone with "Localization support"". RTL/LTR only matters with translation to some LTR languages. Doesn't make sense to implement it without having the translation. Hence I don't understand.

Translations will come eventually when Weblate is fixed. The website needs localization support like RTL as the community is international.

Hey, I know you kinda find your conclusion already. But I agree with @janaka303 original sentiment. AI like Llama2 and Llama3 are excellent at cross latin translations. This could really be used as a basis.

I'm so happy you have finally proposed a CCS. Your design is just awesome.

The recent donations to the general fund may have caused you to put this proposal forward prematurely. I'm more confident in this being reduced to the first milestone now as some of the questions here you are unsure on / don't know.

And then i would be wondering about the proposed rates / time frame as the original getmonero redesign* (less work?) was 50 hours total and even set aside funds for hosting the alternative.

Have you helped with the current website? (pull requests / comments / reviews). Have you tried to add Javascript to the front end? I think we would soon discover its not going to happen. Does this show you are out of touch with the projects needs/wants?

I am ok to reduce the scope to the first milestone. My philosophy is to get the job done, and done well. I am not really into endless debate. Nobody took this task in three years. Because frontend is not as easy as it seems. I spent lot of hours to have the current result. Having a menu that doesn't require JS, lot of little things we may imagine it is easy to do. For example, I was not able to import properly some SVGs images. I had to recompose them using Inkscape. All the illustrations, the icons are taking time to get right, on all screen sizes, optimized. So many little things takes time!

You are comparing the rate asked for the current website. The "design" of the current website is not comparable with this new proposed one. I am open to rediscuss the hours asked but it doesn't seem out of touch for me. It is not as easy to do, otherwise someone else would have done it long time ago. I am not ashamed to ask money for this work.

I didn't contribute to the current website.

Have you tried to add Javascript to the front end?

To which website? I didn't try add JS to any. I don't understand why this question.

I think we would soon discover its not going to happen. Does this show you are out of touch with the projects needs/wants?

I don't understand this accusation.

This proposal is 10,800$

Old proposal were ~1,227$

Monero price was 12.27$ on 2017-02-12 - 100 XMR * 12.27$ = 1,227$

I agree

Replying to the Monero Community Workgroup Meeting: Saturday 11th May that I missed (sorry).

Regarding translation, yes I am more convinced everyday that AI translation with proper LLMs like latest GPT 4 or LLama 3 can do the job very well. For now the English content is "hardcoded" into .astro files. But, with translations, content will be moved into JSON files (most likely). So if you want to edit the content of the regular pages without changing the layout, you just edit the JSON. For blog posts and maybe documentation (not started) it will most likely be Markdown. Now Astro also supports plenty of CMS https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/cms/ I don't think it is necessary but it is possible.

Regarding, why not Hugo, why not X. Yes we could use X, but I have chosen Astro because I personally think this is the best. Please read about it before asking questions.

Regarding rates/hours adjustment, in my opinion the first milestone is on par with freelancing rates in Europe. I take into account the time already spent, the back and forth with the community (I think we should take this opportunity to really improve and update the content but it is maybe too optimistic), the fact that I still need a designer to help me with some remaining tasks and I proposed to pay him out of this first milestome payment, etc. I can't list all the little tasks that need to be done. It takes more time that you imagine, and in my opinion the first milestone proposal is just fair. But anyway, I am open for discussion. By the way, it is still unclear if we should include the documentation in this website. The first milestone proposal assumes it is the case.

Regarding the second milestone, the amount of work is unclear to me, it could be much less than what I proposed. Once I lay the foundations, having everything translated using an LLM is very quick. Totally ok to adjust that milestone.

Regarding third milestone, it's coming from experience that the last 5% of the work takes a lot more. I anticipate that once the website is ready to ship, or once live and accessible to a broader audience, lot of people will wake up and ask to change things. We can adjust or maybe totally skip that milestone.

Any comment on localization support? You didn't respond to my suggestion !450 (comment 24312). Monero is an international community collaboration project with no CEO, from https://www.getmonero.org/resources/about/.

Monero's development and research are conducted via global collaboration, and the project is carried out with utmost transparency. Each development decision is open to public discussion, and every major developer meeting is published online.

It will welcome everyone and and expand the reach of the project across the

If we add RTL languages it will be RTL. Do you have other types of localization in mind?

The import/export process for Weblate.

will the new website redesign support blogs?

Yes, it is part of the scope

Resolved

For me this is still a 1 milestone proposal. "English responsive website" and any perceived 'transition' or promises of, should be removed, I had a brief chat with our current back end admin who only had some general security concerns as this is new / would require setting up but agreed with my observation that the monero-site work group, is short staffed to say the least, a prettier website is not going to fix our problems. My suggestion of just 1 milestone requires less of your skills, and is not project critical, as such, i would expect a reduction in rates to make it appealing.

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Mandatory field amount: is missing https://gitlab.com/thatsnew/runners/-/jobs/7007493058#L395

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Unrelated to this CCS (sort-of) but would you be interested in a general maintainer position for monero/monero-site after this proposal? There's many things that could be cleaned up, improved, made more clear, etc. Lots of open issues/PRs as well.

Hello! Thank you for this question. For sure I would be interested to maintain this website long term. I agree that the content can be improved a lot. The problem I see is that because of CCS centralization it takes ages to achieve anything, if not discouraged before having started.

I guess for me this proposal is a bit out of order.

I would like to see an active website workgroup of (ideally) "known" people with web and XMR experience, compensated nominally if needed, that could steward the website. They could create or solicit proposals for whatever is deemed needed, along the lines of what Seraphis workgroup and now FMCP is doing.

Are you only interested in working with this future website you create, or would you consider joining a generic website workgroup that could include future proposal submissions for (for example):

1. Maintainer position
2. Dev work (of whatever scale)

Probably lack of communication has significantly contributed to this situation, but I do not want to discourage progress or stall anything; I would greatly like to transfer some responsibilities to trustworthy parties.

Maybe I should have mention it. For me it was really obvious. I am spending time on this because I am a strong Monero believer and I want to contribute to Monero success as I can. Yes, I would strongly be interested in a long term maintainer position and additional dev work. I was a bit known in the Bitcoin community. At the time I produced lot of educational content, gave some technical classes. My first work with crypto in general was to translate a good chunk of "Mastering Bitcoin" in French. I have been around for a while, I am trustworthy. We can talk off record also if you want to know me more.

Awesome, thanks for that! Let's chat a bit more in the coming days. I will follow up soon.

1. the prototype is broken on mobile.
2. adding astro to the build process will make the already outgrown jekyll worse. If the goal is to replace the jekyll site with an astro site it means we replace one static site generator with another static site generator.

while I support making the website better, the proposal should address why the current website is like it is and how it intends to improve the current situation.

I don't see how this one will change anything while introducing new technologies that are not an improvement over the old ones. Astro means a switch from ruby to javascript, but we will still have a statically generated website. The visual changes could also be made to the current jekyll files.

Closing in favor of constructing a functioning website workgroup. (it could be reopened/modified given output of said group)

closed

mentioned in merge request !470 (merged)

reopened