Bonsai
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Resources, Grants, & Bounties
25 grants
Hold: Need to look into more info about Harmony's future after the Harmony Bridge hack.
Harmony Grants ProgramPending: Next grant program not yet announced
Braintrust Grants ProgramTrellis/group_vars
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Learn how to build a SaaS product from scratch– idea to MVP.
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Project Bonsai Project Bonsai is a secure and modern WordPress stack. The goal: To simplify the process of building a Roots WordPress site with a streamlined configuration with a corresponding tutorial videos. Bonsai is a custom configuration of WordPress, Roots, Trellis, Bedrock, Sage, Bootstrap and other open source projects. Tutorial Trello board: Speed Run For … Continued
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This video will show you how to use Unlock Protocol to lock content. To unlock the video, you will need to sign up and purchase a free NFT above. Last stream (Day 76) was a bit rocky… I wanted to see how hard it was to get started from scratch. Installing the plugin and integrating … Continued
Full articleComing soon..
Full articleThis episode we’re trying to close all of the issues before the alpha launch. The list is getting smaller. I don’t think we’ll finish on this episode, but we might be able to get pretty close. I was hoping to make this episode about contributing to the Unlock Protocol WordPress plugin– but I’ve run into … Continued
Full articleLast episode we went over how to do user testing for our upcoming alpha launch of v.0.0.10. I haven’t set a hard date, because it’s going to be a very soft launch. I will probably release it the first week of February, but I’m willing to delay if needed. This will be an ongoing series … Continued
Full articleI’m stoked to announce that we received a grant from Unlock Protocol! A crypto grant to be exact, this is new! How it works, is that Unlock Protocol has their own cryptocurrency called UDT. The grant is deposited once per month over 12 months. Once we have shipped the product integrated with Unlock, we will … Continued
Full articleLast stream (Day 76) was a bit rocky. I wanted to see how hard it was to get started from scratch. Installing the plugin and integrating it to the website was easy. The harder part was creating a lock, because I had never used Metamask before. The hardest part can be getting ETH, Matic, or … Continued
Full articleToday we are going to hopefully integrate Unlock Protocol with Bonsai. Usually I spend quite a bit of time planning out my streams. Today is going to be a little different, because I want to come into it with as little as planning as possible. I want to test what the points of friction would … Continued
Full articleYesterday’s stream was kind of a flop. My macbook was having some power issues, so it kept shutting down. It was a success, in that it got me closer to getting back into flow state while streaming. Which can be surprisingly difficult when you’re a bit rusty. Today I’m going to keep it shorter and … Continued
Full articleThe fact that I’m itching just start working makes me want to take a pause. Because that’s what I would have done last year. I love working. I can just jump right in. But last year, I’m not sure that I really took the time to set any meaningful goals other than to just do … Continued
Full articleScript for live stream day 72: The MVP v.0.8 – Education in the Metaverse Getting opportunity to pitch JCal. Elon musk cutting off my pitch. Play video, scrub through some parts maybe (rehearse this before streaming) Getting ghosted. The baby Maybe a couple pictures or videos from IG + FB? The MVP v0.10 – Patreon … Continued
Full articleContinuing where we left off yesterday, we’re finalizing v0.0.8 of Bonsai. This version will be what I consider the first MVP. I mean, technically speaking, Bonsai was an MVP since day one. But this will be the first version I’m proud enough of to promote– or at least not ashamed of. I think it was … Continued
Full articleI’m getting ready to roll out version 0.0.8 of Bonsai. It’s a laundry list of things to get it up and running as a fully functional prototype. Yesterday we made Circle.so compatible with Bonsai’s dark mode settings. This new version of Bonsai represents a big step. I think the biggest upgrade is that Bonsai now … Continued
Full articleI’m getting ready to roll out version 0.0.8 of Bonsai. It’s a laundry list of things to get it up and running as a fully functional prototype. Yesterday we made Circle.so compatible with Bonsai’s dark mode settings. This new version of Bonsai represents a big step. I think the biggest upgrade is that Bonsai now … Continued
Full articleCircle doesn’t offer dark mode yet, but if you have the Professional plan and you’re willing to copy paste a line of code, you’ll be able to have it. The one caveat is that it doesn’t give you a toggle within the app. Instead it listens to your operating system’s preferences. So whether you’re on … Continued
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Learn how to build a SaaS product from scratch– idea to MVP.
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Create a dApp for Your Community
Bonsai Community Access (Basic)
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Learn to create your own Bonsai
$29/m
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Find Bonsai Mastery
$49/m
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Create a private community in minutes Hosted on Bonsai.so
$149/m
Custom Domain & Shared Hosting
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Annual plan: 900 MATIC
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Annual plan: 1,800 MATIC
Unlimited Everything
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Annual plan: 2,700 MATIC
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Create a private community in minutes Hosted on Bonsai.so
$75/m
We're here to help you get Web3 grants
Bonsai is open-source, so you can take the current version of it, or any past versions, fork it, make tweaks to it, and build the features you want to build.
Then once you have an MVP working, you can apply for one of our grants, or any grants you can find. We have a grant program, but you can also browse a list of Top 25 Grants.
You are free to steal Bonsai and do whatever you want with it. The sky is the limit.
That depends how far along you are on your idea.
If you're starting from scratch, then we would encourage you to apply from one of our grants, then use Bonsai to get the ball rolling asap.
That depends on how similar to Patreon your product is going to be. Also, how proficient you are at web development.
For example, Substack, Masterclass, or OnlyFans would be pretty similar to Patreon. Shopify or Spotify might take a bit more work.
Bonsai is open-source, so you can always contribute on Github for free.
Signing up for a free account is a start. Bonsai Curious and Pro are nice steps up from there if you want to learn more.
You could pay for one of our hosted plans if you wanted your own website without having to do all the work.
Or you could help us by building one of our bounties or grants.
If you'd like to see an updated demo, or receive updates– subscribe below.
This file is the index, or the Bible for all things Bonsai.so that are in production.
Explainer video: 8:36
Product Demo: 1:30
Bonsai is Patreon for Web3.
Bonsai is a walled garden for your community to access exclusive content, perks, and events.
Category: Web3, Community, Continuing Education, Developer Tools, K-12, Entertainment, and Media.
Get monthly updates about Bonsai.so
Whether it’s Patreon, OnlyFans, Teachable, Shopify, etc– they own your content, your audience, your business, and so they basically own you.
In the future, you will have a convenient open-source option. You will have the option of owning the software that you and your community use. You will own all of the rights to make the decision whether you want to run it on your own server, or pay somebody else to manage it for you. Either way, you own the full code repository and the database. You will own your business.
For now, I think going to focus on education as the foundation of the product. I know that you want Unlock Protocol to widely adopted, and I think more education on the topic will help. Especially in video form.
I’m glad that I haven’t taken any investments yet, because a company like this needs to be formed as a DAO. Most traditional investors wouldn’t have allowed that. I would love to learn more about how you’ve structured Unlock DAO.
I’m going to focus on Patreon for now. I wasn’t focused enough in 2021. In 2022 I’m going to focus on a narrow vertical, rather than building a wide array of features. I will only add features when/if one of our grants receives interest, and I can find a good team to complete it.
Patreon can be used as an LMS. But when people pay for content, I see little need in quizzing them. You give them the content they pay for, and if they value it, they will use it. That allows us to cut out most of the LMS functionality, and still use it as an LMS.
Julien Genestoux from Unlock Protocol told me about a plan to allow people to unlock content with a Twitter follow or share. Also a Patreon OAuth integration. I see this as more of an OnlyFans feature where you can follow for free, then pay per individual post. Except instead of paying for individual posts, you could incentivize a visitor to unlock it with a subscribe, follow, share, comment, etc. It’s almost like a freemium version of Patreon.
Later on, I could build a custom way to do this with Stripe, but I will focus on using Unlock Protocol for now.
Bonsai DAO
2022
September - Bonsai v0.0.11: Pre-Beta
October-December - Bonsai v0.1: Beta
2023
January-March - Bonsai v1.0
2 week launch plan:
Specific: We would start with influential communities before moving onto influencers.
More Specific: We would primarily focus on influential communities who have shared technical skills, such as design, marketing, development, and art.
Each of these is it's own MVA (minimal viable audience).
Go To Market Strategy Summary
We could offer equity or revenue sharing deals to the most influential communities.
We start by targeting the most influential ones in design, development, engineering, and art.
Pre-existing communities similar to The Futur. Where we all met each other.
Each one makes up its own minimum viable audience (MVA). When we're ready to scale, we start stacking them.
These prospect communities are the Minimum Viable Audiences with shared technical skills.
Bonsai was created on Roots, which is a modern configuration of Wordpress. Trellis includes a LEMP stack with Ansible, Vagrant, Composer, WP-CLI, and more. The Bonsai theme is a custom version of Sage, which is a modern starter theme by Roots which uses Laravel Blade.
In 2023, Bonsai will be updated to Sage 10 and Trellis >=v1.17
Github RepositoryWordpress
Roots
Digital Ocean*
Stripe
Gravity Forms*
Sensei LMS
Bootstrap 4
Vagrant 2
Virtualbox 4
Composer
Yarn
Node
Ubuntu
PHP 7
NGINX
Maria DB
A+ SSL
Let's Encrypt
WP-CLI
Sass
Ansible
Laravel
Browsersync
Blade
Trellis/group_vars
Trellis/hosts
site/wp-cli.yml
site/scripts
Learn how to build a SaaS product from scratch– idea to MVP.
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Bonsai at the core, is ultimately THE platform we want to run your community.
There will always be an open source version of Bonsai, which I teach students how to make. It will teach students how to build an MVP. This portion of the company is called The Bonsai Foundation.
I have a belief that the best design will ultimately win out. But that's just a belief.
In reality, the first to market usually wins, because they win free real estate in the customer's mind. Being first is better than having a better design in the short term.
So we will focus on being first in our category, but only temporarily until we focus on design innovation– which is our ultimate goal.
Enforcable by law for all time and across all universes:
No Data sharing of user data on Bonsai.so
Bonsai will be community supported, and we will handle our user data responsible. Since Bonsai is open-source, we can't control what other developers do with their user data.
Bonsai is built on the Roots ecosystem, using Trellis 1.4, which is now outdated. Bonsai needs to be updated to Trellis 1.17.
ApplyI recorded and edited tutorials for Bonsai on v0.0.1. Since then I have only done live streams. The edited tutorials take a lot of time, practice, and editing– so I haven't had a chance to update it. We are always looking for somebody with the skills to create clear and concise tutorials on using the latest version of Bonsai– primarily the Bonsai Speed Run.
ApplyCreate a way to lock articles and content by post category instead of having to configure each post's lock manually.
Preferably compatible with the Members plugin by Memberpress.
ApplyCreate a way to split revenue payouts between users.
ApplyIn v0.0.1 of Bonsai, it was using Sensei LMS. It supposedly requires paid plugins, but I was able to circumvent the need to WooCommerce Stripe by using Gravity Forms user registration and the Members plugin. So I might recommend this as a starting point, but you can propose a different method.
Note: I think there is still some leftover SCSS for Sensei LMS as of v0.0.11
ApplyDesign and deploy a high end feeling comment system for the courses and lesson pages
ApplyIn v0.0.1 of Bonsai, it was using Sensei LMS. It supposedly requires paid plugins, but I was able to circumvent the need to WooCommerce Stripe by using Gravity Forms user registration and the Members plugin. So I might recommend this as a starting point, but you can propose a different method.
Note: I think there is still some leftover SCSS for Sensei LMS as of v0.0.11
ApplyDesign and deploy a high end feeling comment system for the courses and lesson pages
ApplyDesign and deploy a high end feeling user flow for Substack functionality
ApplyDesign and deploy a high end feeling user flow for Eventbrite functionality
Apply