author = "Dan Brown"
slug = "bookstack-in-2023"
draft = false
-date = 2024-01-04T12:00:00Z
+date = 2024-01-04T12:35:00Z
+++
As we enter into 2024 I thought we'd once again look back over the past year to
-see how the project has evolved, in terms of both the core platform and the
-supporting working, including the current funding seen throughout 2023.
+review the development of the platform throughout 2023 while also diving into
+topics about the wider project including funding and the impact of AI.
+
+{{<toc>}}
### Project Funding
-With 2023 now complete that marks another completely year where I've been focusing on BookStack
+With 2023 now complete that marks another full year where I've been focusing on BookStack
instead of being employed elsewhere. Looking back to [my 2022 post](https://www.bookstackapp.com/blog/bookstack-in-2022/)
I had totalled about £15k of funding, with the rest of my living costs being paid for via personal savings.
[GitHub sponsors](https://github.com/sponsors/ssddanbrown) has been relatively stable throughout the year, with a little fluctuation due to one-off donations and sponsors dropping in/out, and the december spike reflecting up-front sponsorship payment.
-Usage of [Ko-Fi](https://ko-fi.com/ssddanbrown) has increased during 2023, with a current monthly recurring membership of £127 between donators and sponsors, with frequent one-off donations in various sizes.
+[Usage of Ko-Fi](https://ko-fi.com/ssddanbrown) has increased during 2023, with a current monthly recurring membership of £127 between donators and sponsors, with frequent one-off donations in various sizes.
The biggest growth factor by far has been through the support services.
-As you can see, I've had monthly income through support services to help bolster income.
-The lack of services reflected in December is due to how I report on these figures. Services were purchased in this month, but they'd be reflected in Jan 24 numbers.
-Renewal of support services upon those purchase last year has been healthy which, when combined with new subscriptions, has resulted in a stable
-revenue source that's really helped stabalise and boost income.
+As you can see, I've had some consistent monthly income through support services to help bolster income.
+The lack of services reflected in December is just due to how I report on these figures, services were purchased in this month but they'd be reflected in Jan 24 numbers.
+Renewal of support services upon those purchased last year has been healthy which, when combined with new subscriptions, has resulted in a stable
+revenue source for 2023.
I can't thank enough all those that have donated, sponsored, or purchased support offerings.
It's incredible to me that I'm able to pretty much cover my living costs, while building and sharing
an open source project, without needing to gate or lock features behind paywalls & barriers, and without
having money dictate the direction of the project.
-Now that I had a stable income source, as I was no longer burning
-through savings, I could now adopt a cat again so a thanks also from this
-handsome little lion named Ben who I adopted at the start of December:
+Now that I had a stable income source, without the need to burn through
+savings, I could now comfortably adopt a cat once again so a thanks also from this
+floofy little lion named Ben who I adopted from Cats Protection early in December:
-<img src="/images/2024/01/ben.jpg" width="320">
+<img src="/images/2024/01/ben.jpg" width="240">
Ben will take a primarily motivational role on the BookStack project, while also acting as our chief mouser.
### New Features & Enhancements
-Within 2023 we've published 7 feature releases, with 15 patch versions for those.
+Throughout 2023 we've published 7 feature releases, with 15 patch versions for those.
The below list summarizes many of the most significant additions and changes made during these releases:
- Notification system
- Added more customization-focused partial views
Looking across what has been achieved I'm really quite happy with the balance between new features & systems,
-and improvements to existing features & systems.
+and improvements to existing parts of the platform.
I'm always trying to keep a focus on building upon, and improving, the platform for our existing user
base instead of chasing a wider audience via new features, and I think we're keeping to that focus well.
This is a bit lower than the 45% growth last year, but is not bad considering I've done almost no
additional outreach or marketing content pushes this year, so a ~15% growth indicates
a nice steady natural rise.
+
Last year we started the year very strong with [reaching the top of Hacker News](https://www.bookstackapp.com/blog/9000-stars-and-the-effects-of-hacker-news/),
which then boosted activity for a good while, but there hasn't really been any spikes or visitor boosts
from anything similar in 2023.
+
Maybe I need to put more active effort into marketing in 2024 although it's not clear if there's a reason to do so,
-and slow & steady growth has it's own benefits of being more manageable and requiring less resources.
+and slow & steady growth has its own benefits of being more manageable and requiring less resources.
To be honest, as long as we're trending in the right direction, I'm happy.
I'd rather not chase numbers for the sake of it.
Money isn't really the target though, as it's very far from covering the effort in making this content.
These videos are really about building this extra resource and community hub, while providing
a means for me to celebrate and emphasise work being done for the project.
-Folks dunk on YouTube comments as being a toxic place, but generally the feedback I get is
+While many dunk on YouTube comments as typically being a toxic place, In generally the feedback I get is
wonderfully wholesome which feeds my motivation for the project.
As you can see from the other stats, we've generally had good growth overall, even as
I recently promote the YouTube content less in favour of the [PeerTube alternative I set-up](https://www.bookstackapp.com/blog/bookstack-on-foss-video/).
-I've been meaning to play around with shorts, just to provide quick summaries for releases, but my recording flow & format doesn't really make this easy.
+I've been meaning to play around with YouTube shorts, just to provide quick summaries for releases, but my recording flow & format doesn't really make this easy.
The usage of the [BookStack PeerTube channel](https://foss.video/c/bookstack/videos) has gone well so far.
Views and usage is predictably a lot lower than our established YouTube presence, but I've really liked the fact
we're not forcing folks to view ads, or submit to Google's privacy requirements, when sending visitors to video
-content from the BookStack site. Plus it's nice to be a part of the open social fediverse.
+content from the BookStack site. Plus it's nice for this content to be a part of the open social fediverse.
On the subject of video and YouTube, in August [I spotted BookStack](https://fosstodon.org/@danb/110956729212142440)
used within a Linus Tech Tips video, which was pretty awesome to see.
along with their co-existence and potential benefits for projects like BookStack.
In regard to LLM usage in BookStack, earlier this year I came across [Danswer](https://docs.danswer.dev/introduction)
-which I built an integration for which allowed Chat-GPT querying of your BookStack content.
+which I built an integration for which allowed Chat-GPT-like querying of your BookStack content.
I talked about this more, along with a demo of this integration, [in my video here from about 4:28](https://foss.video/w/mB67n8JBBHb9mSMYUM5DED?start=4m28s).
This is probably the most valuable usage of LLMs with a system like BookStack.
I've also heard some other good ideas like using LLMs to generate out templates, or base page content.
Another neat idea is using image generation to create book and shelf covers.
-Most of these desired should be possible via existing integration methods for the most part although
+Most of these ideas should be possible to implement via existing integration methods for the most part although
as LLM/AI options, and the desired usages of them, evolve we may start to see areas where we can
-specifically provide interfaces to help these kinds of tools.
+specifically provide interfaces to help integrate with this kind of tooling.
Outside of the core platform, we'd also seen AI's impact in our issue management, as well as in
external news content for BookStack, both of which reflects the downsides of AI:
-On issue management, I've had a couple submitted that were clearly filled out using an LLM.
+On issue management, I've had a couple of feature requests submitted that were clearly filled out using an LLM.
I don't mind a LLM used to help where it adds value, to assist user written content.
-Unfortunately though, in these cases, it has simply been used in feature requests to back up the request
+Unfortunately though, in these cases, it has simply been used to fill the request
with many paragraphs of generic text that has barely a grasp of what BookStack is.
These cases are a little frustrating as it just serves to waste my time, in attempting to extract any underlying intent
-and value. I'm having to somewhat reverse the content to their original prompt.
-The questions on our feature request form are to understand the value to users, not those imagined by a text generator.
+and value. I'm having to somewhat reverse the content to their original LLM prompt.
+The questions on our feature request form are to understand the value to users as humans, not those imagined by a text generator.
-In regard to news content, BookStack [was featured on Laravel news](https://web.archive.org/web/20231109033107/https%3A%2F%2Fp.rizon.top%3A443%2Fhttps%2Flaravel-news.com%2Fbookstack-documentation-wiki-software) which was awesome as a long-term reader of the site myself.
+In regard to news content, BookStack [was featured on Laravel News](https://web.archive.org/web/20231109033107/https%3A%2F%2Fp.rizon.top%3A443%2Fhttps%2Flaravel-news.com%2Fbookstack-documentation-wiki-software) which was awesome as a long-term reader of the site myself.
Unfortunately when reading it was quickly clear the article was LLM generated since many of the features detailed
reflected a limited grasp on understanding BookStack while some of them were just wrong & misleading.
Due to these issues, I didn't feel I could celebrate or share the article as that would just propagate this incorrect content.
Instead I emailed the site to notify them of the inaccuracies, with advised changes, although I had to follow that up [with a Tweet](https://twitter.com/bookstack_app/status/1722457925900280074) a few days later to prompt some action. It was then promptly updated using the text from our website.
+This isn't meant to pick on Laravel News, but is an example of what we'll probably start to see more and more going forward.
### Hacks Site
[Earlier in the year](https://www.bookstackapp.com/blog/hacks-on-the-site/) I set-up the [BookStack hacks site](https://www.bookstackapp.com/hacks/)
as a means to publish potentially useful hacks & customiziations for easy re-use.
So far this has been a useful resource to point folks to when required, although at the same time there have been a few cases
-of folks relying on these hacks without the knowledge to maintain them, requiring them to need support in some cases,
+of people relying on these hacks without the knowledge to maintain them, requiring them to need support in some cases,
even though we clearly mark them as risky and unsupported.
There's a tricky tension in these hacks, as it provides functionality we can't or don't want to support in the official project,
### Going into 2024
-Looking to start of 2024 I'd like to take a step back and try out some newer technologies in the PHP space
+Looking to start off 2024 I'd like to take a step back and try out some newer technologies in the PHP space
to see how they can impact or benefit BookStack users. These are newer PHP server projects
like roadrunner and FrankenPHP.
In terms of my personal plan, I intend to keep working on the project as my primary full-time job,
especially now that I'm in the bounds of being somewhat financially stable.
-Over the next year I'd like to become a little more open and active to outreach and community building.
+Over the next year I'd like to become a little more open & active to outreach & community building.
As an example, I was invited to be on a podcast which I've yet to accept because that kind of
thing makes me really nervous as a super introvert, but I think it'd be fun to do while helpful for the project.
Otherwise, as we go into the next year I just want to thank everyone that's supported me and the project
over the last year. That's not limited to just financial support, that includes all the contributors,
translators, community members, folks recommending us on Reddit & other channels, those getting
-involved in discussions on GitHub, those making articles and videos about BookStack. All these kinds
+involved in discussions on GitHub, and those making articles and videos about BookStack. All these kinds
of things really do help in both supporting the project directly or providing motivation to those
-working on the project. Thanks.
+working on the project. Thanks!
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