About

What is this place?

Ozzu is a resource hub targeted at webmasters, designers, programmers, developers, IT professionals, game creators, graphic artists, photographers, computer users, and anybody into technology. Our audience includes the average Joe, technology enthusiasts, business owners looking for resources to improve their web presence, and professionals, many who are employed by Fortune 500 companies.

Our mission is to provide the technology and resources to allow people to work together to solve problems. From our community market where you can buy digital assets, to our discussions and Q&A forums that allow you to learn new skills, we want to be able to help you on every level to achieve your greatest.

Our History

Ozzu.com officially began way back on Friday, December 20, 2002 with its focus being a webmaster forum. For almost 20 years and even though our website design changed a few different times, the core system that Ozzu was built on top of was phpBB.

Ozzu 1st Generation

2002 - 2004

Ozzu 2nd Generation

2004 - 2008

Ozzu 3rd Generation

2008 - 2021

At its heart, the phpBB software that Ozzu was relying on was created specifically for the purpose of having a bulletin board forum. Many of the features Ozzu had exceeded that limitation due to custom code extending the phpBB core to bring features and upgrades such as performance optimizations, moderation tools to help combat bad behavior such as spam, an area for pre-made website templates, and a feature that allowed threads to be moved to the home page in the form of headlines. Ozzu may have very well been one of the most customized phpBB websites that ever existed with over 75 different plugins installed, many of which were custom made. At a glance Ozzu did not resemble a typical phpBB forum that you would find elsewhere on the Internet.

Where We Are Today

In October of 2021 we released a complete overhaul of Ozzu rewriting everything from the ground up. At its very core Ozzu is now built on top of the Laravel Framework which is described as a web application framework with expressive, elegant syntax that attempts to take the pain out of web development. The framework is built with security in mind and tackles many of the common areas that the majority of websites would need to handle including session management, authentication, working with databases, requests and input, and views and responses.

We created the application that performs all of the business logic as well as the front-end user interface that everyone can interact with. This was no easy feat and even though there were many challenges and complexities involved, our goal was to make everything on Ozzu straightforward and easy to use. Some of our most exciting features that we have built include:

  • Authentication System — Allows you to login via multiple methods including regular username/password or via your favorite social media account.
  • Badges — Signals that you have achieved a special accomplishment with some badges being very easy to earn while others being much more difficult.
  • Reputation — The primary way you can earn reputation is by creating content that others find useful. Reputation unlocks other areas on Ozzu in the form of privileges.
  • Privileges — As you gain reputation new privileges will be awarded to which you can use to help make Ozzu a fantastic place for everyone else.
  • Tags — Sometimes it is hard to put a topic into a single category, with tags you can put your topics in up to 5 different places that might make sense.
  • Topic Formats — Different types of topics including question / answer, wiki / tutorials, code snippets, discussion, and meta / admin.
  • Light & Dark Theme — By default our theme will use light colors, but if you are one who enjoys the dark side we have an alternate theme built just for you.
  • Revision System — Changes made to posts are kept in history and utilize diffs to visually show what has changed with the ability to revert changes if needed.
  • Real Time Notifications — Using web sockets the server can push real time notifications to your browser in the form of events such as being awarded a new badge.
  • Up/Down Voting — You can help push the best answers towards the top! If someone upvotes or downvotes your post it will also influence your reputation.
  • Accepted Posts — If you are the owner of topic, you can mark what the answer you thought was the most helpful.

Our development process has been greatly enhanced which will allow making changes or future additions to Ozzu much easier. From utilizing Git to manage changes in our codebase, automated testing with PHPUnit to help ensure bug-free releases, and deployment scripts to help release the changes, everything is much more streamlined compared to the past.

Overall, our focus is on creating a website that is both engaging and useful to our visitors. Our goal is to be able to offer information, resources, tools, and more in a friendly manner that is fun and easy to use. We have tried to simplify our design to make it easier and more logical to find areas that you need to reach, removing clutter that distracts you from getting what you want. With the ever increasing use of mobile devices, we are proud to say Ozzu is responsive and will work everywhere.

Ownership Information

Ozzu.com is a property owned and operated by Unmelted, LLC which is based in the Seattle, Washington area in the United States. Unmelted, LLC was founded in 1998 by Brian Wozeniak and became a limited liability company in 2011. Brian Wozeniak is the current CEO and is a native to the Pacific NorthWest.

Reaching Out to Us

Seattle, WA

The quickest and most efficient way to contact us is via our contact page.

You can also contact us via our Facebook or Twitter pages.

If you need to contact us via postal mail, please send to:

Unmelted, LLC 18429 Veterans Memorial Dr E #7522 Bonney Lake, WA 98391 United States

At this time we do not offer phone support for any of our products or services, however, if you believe your message is urgent and you are unable to reach us via e-mail you can contact us here:

(571) 354-6998

We will not respond to solicitations.