It has been a little over a year since I provided an update, and Mark reminded me that one was likely overdue.
The biggest update that occurred in the last year was that Ozzu has migrated away from Amazon AWS back to a dedicated server at HorizionIQ (formerly INAP, and before that Singlehop). That migration did cause a few problems mainly because I decided to lock down Redis. Before Ozzu was just using a root password with Redis and it had full permissions, but now as it back on a server with others its using an ACL and only using the permissions its needed restricted to its own datasets. That did cause some issues and additional adjustments had to be made as the lack of some permissions caused posts to essentially stay in their hidden grace period (to allow 5 minutes of edits before being published).
As you are probably aware, AI is completely reshaping the tech landscape; everything is changing from content creation such as text, images, and video, to how people like developers perform there jobs, and to how people generally search and find data. In the past, when developers had issues they would use Google to search for their problem and they would then land on informational websites like Ozzu that would help solve their problems. These days many simply reach for AI, whether its OpenAI, Google's AI (in search or Gemini), Microsoft Copilot, or Elon Musk's Grok; and there are plenty more. The latest change in the last few months is that Google is increasingly showing AI generated content to help answer the query above the normal list of websites it would normally refer to. This has negatively impacted many websites throughout the world including Ozzu. While impressions have declined and increased (green bar), clicks have continued to be decimated (black line) which means less visibility for Ozzu (discouraging):
The only comfort I have with this graph is its happening for all informational websites, essentially AI is stealing and rehashing content from the Internet and capitalizing on it. For the short term likely a huge win for searcher's and the companies profiting from AI, but it will kill these sort of websites and I predict that the quality of information will likely degrade over time as AI content is regurgitated/hallucinated and there is no motivation for creators to research and publish new content that is helpful. Even huge websites that are competitors to Ozzu like Stackoverflow are having major declines in traffic. The impact on other websites that have SAAS or products as their primary feature won't be nearly as impacted.
With that said as AI is changing the landscape quickly, the vision I still have for Ozzu is for it to eventually provide a marketplace, SAAS, or other tools that are non-informational to help attract and keep a thriving community. The QA/forums will likely be a secondary priority as at least the way things are going it will not be enough to attract or sustain a community here.
With that said there have been quite a few updates over the last year:
Full List of Changes:
- Added md file with required Redis permissions #2646
- Added .gitkeep to directories that should be present #2640
- Updated composer packages to latest #2628
- The .env file now has the option to pass Redis username #2638
- Added logic to record CSP violations in logs instead of report-uri service #2637
- System will now log additional info if 404 is caused by missing view #2632
- Updated composer packages to latest #2628
- Ozzu logo is no longer an h1 #2627
- Fixed W3C validation errors #2619
- Added new privileges for seeing or managing post visibility #2608
- First/Late posts can now be edited immediately if not confirmed #2580
- Updated composer packages to latest versions #2478
- Fixed captcha issues on modals if validation errors occurred #2591
- Fixed facebook linking issues with gmail accounts #2588
- Fixed issue with organic keyword traffic stats not updating #2586
- Added key for IndexNow #2579
- Updated posthog to utilize latest snippet version #2578
- Added optimization to flatten includes in cached blade files #2547
- Ensured threads do not show publicly unless they have an answer or reply #2572
- Removed dependencies on view composers #2554
- Fix split bug where second part becomes comment of the first #2562
- Prevent host header attack with Apache directory listings #2560
- Updated Laravel Debugbar to be compatible with Laravel 11 #2555
- Updated composer packages to latest versions #2478
- Fixed issue with new tags not showing immediately on posts #2512
- Fixed ajax timeout handling of response callback #2514
- Captcha forms will now disable CTAs until ready #2540
- Updated composer packages to latest versions #2478
- Disable hash verify to allow phpbb3 password fallback for older accounts #2541
- Resolved 500 issue that could come up with flushing opcache #2534
- Fix issue with showing flags on post #2532
- Upgraded to Laravel 11 #2509
- Questions with no answers will no longer be public by default #2526
- Fixed issue with opcache stats preventing them from loading #2525
- Updates to allow full PHP 8.3 support #2524
- Updated composer packages to latest versions #2478
- No longer log CORs JS blocked errors since they lack info for resolving #2449
- Fixed syntax highlighter error caused by data type issue #2520
