--- /dev/null
++++
+categories = ["News"]
+tags = ["News"]
+title = "BookStack in 2021"
+image = "/images/blog-cover-images/robin-alfred-kenneally.jpg"
+author = "Dan Brown"
+slug = "bookstack-in-2021"
+draft = false
+date = 2021-12-31T20:00:00Z
++++
+
+Thought it would be nice to take some time out to look back over the last year
+to review how things have progressed. This'll be a relatively high level summary
+but more detailed figures can be found in our [six years of BookStack](/blog/6-years-of-bookstack/)
+post from back in July.
+
+### Development Rate
+
+Development rate in 2021 has been fairly steady. The chart below shows releases, of any type, per month from the start of 2020 through to now:
+
+
+
+For 2021 we've had releases every single month with 7 feature releases and 30 patch
+releases. In the last few months, [since leaving my job](https://danb.me/blog/posts/leaving-my-job-to-focus-on-open-source/), I've been able to wrap up a feature release every month thanks to having much more time available to devote to the project.
+I hope to continue this cadence although a focus on some larger upcoming features may hinder this progression to some level.
+
+### New Features & Enhancements
+
+Below lists some of the major additions we've added to BookStack in 2021
+across 7 feature releases and 30 patch releases:
+
+- Tag overview page.
+- Favorites system.
+- Recycle bin.
+- Content ownership.
+- Multi-factor authentication.
+- OpenID Connect authentication.
+- Outgoing webhooks.
+- Chapter, book & role copying.
+- Custom footer links.
+- Logical theme system implementation.
+- 8 new languages:
+ - Norwegian, Bosnian, Catalan, Indonesian, Latvian, Portuguese, Lithuanian, Estonian.
+- Next/Previous page & chapter navigation.
+- A large amount of search enhancements.
+ - Tags within search results.
+ - More advanced parsing and scoring.
+ - Relative usage based-scoring.
+- LDAP user avatar import.
+- Markdown export.
+- Improved accessibility.
+ - Usage of new contrast preferences.
+ - Addition of "Skip to content" link.
+ - Header keyboard navigation overhaul.
+- API enhancements.
+ - Page endpoint.
+ - Search endpoints.
+ - Image upload via page markdown/html content.
+ - Attachment endpoints.
+- Audit log enhancements
+ - Greater event tracking.
+ - More search options.
+ - Addition of IP address tracking.
+- Shelf sorting.
+- A new debug view.
+- Implementation of Content Security Policy for greater security.
+- Laravel framework update from Laravel 6 to Laravel 8.
+- PHP 8 & 8.1 support.
+
+Personally, my favorite addition has been the "Favorites" system since it was relatively easy to implement
+while having a large affect on my own usage, in allow personal curation of a list of content for quick
+access.
+
+The developments to the API this year have meant it's now viable for many use-cases, and it's been
+good to hear feedback of people using this to automate and speed-up processes. The recent addition
+of webhooks, along with the implementation of the logical theme system, mean that BookStack
+is now much more extensible and open for integration.
+
+Some of the most challenging developments this year have been then authentication elements; OpenID Connect and
+multi-factor authentication. Understanding the relevant specifications, while attempting to understand the
+various desired user/environment use-cases, takes a lot of time and discovery. It's been personally
+beneficial to learn some new web standards but the effort and time required, while knowing the
+user-base benefits are likely limited, can be demoralizing. Going into 2022 I'll be even more defensive
+when it comes to implementing further authentication features.
+
+Gaining an extra 8 languages is pretty incredible. I can't thank the translating community
+enough for the work they do to add and update language content.
+
+### Version Numbering Change
+
+Back in April, [as of v21.04](/blog/bookstack-release-v21-04/) we dropped our beta
+status and moved to a new versioning scheme to follow a year-month style format.
+This change went pretty smoothly and the new scheme has already been very
+beneficial to me when dealing with support requests, allowing me to know the relative
+age of someone's BookStack instance just by their version number. Looking back, I'm
+happy we made this change.
+
+### YouTube Videos
+
+Producing official BookStack videos has been a new thing for 2021.
+You can [find the YouTube channel here](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH66RFWfw6CSm2T1EM4ik1g).
+This has been an interesting new learning process for me as I attempt to improve the presentation
+and quality of these videos, but it's also been quite fun to do in moments I want to do something
+a little more creative.
+
+Below is my most recent video, at time of writing, which goes over using webhooks in BookStack:
+
+<iframe width="100%" height="420" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_zIp1ruGpoI" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
+
+Having videos on specific BookStack topics has already provide very handy when needing to reference
+certain functionality and processes during support so I'll look to continue producing videos throughout 2022.
+
+### Official Twitter Account
+
+In October I created an [official BookStack twitter account](https://twitter.com/bookstack_app)
+so people can follow project updates without having to also scroll through
+cat pictures on my personal handle. This is something I should have done sooner really
+since it's clear that people are more likely to tag the project in their own tweets when
+an official account exists, providing a network boosting affect.
+
+### Sponsors & Project Funding
+
+Over the last year I've been accepting [sponsorship/donations via GitHub](https://github.com/sponsors/ssddanbrown).
+Initially most of these donations were used to help donate to upstream projects used by BookStack.
+Over the last few months I've stopped expanding that idea while not being employed to assess viability
+of working on BookStack full time.
+
+
+
+A massive thanks to all those that have sponsored me so far.
+There's been over 50 unique donators contributing in various amounts.
+About half of these are one-off donations with the other half being monthly/yearly commitments.
+I set a monthly goal on my profile of $2,000 since that would roughly cover my living costs
+to work on BookStack full time (If a chose to take that path).
+
+A specially massive thanks to JGraph (Known for [draw.io/diagrams.net](https://www.diagrams.net/)) and
+[Stellar Hosted](https://www.stellarhosted.com/) for their especially large monthly sponsorships.
+I've since formalised the larger "Company" sponsorship tiers to provide logo display on the
+BookStack website homepage in addition to the project readme, as a token of thanks and to encourage
+further company level monthly sponsorships.
+
+
+
+
+### Website Usage
+
+Throughout 2021 our bookstackapp.com website usage has been fairly flat, with it lowering in the
+northern hemisphere summer months. Ideally I'd like to see this grow at a greater rate
+as BookStack reaches a larger audience but I find it difficult to gain engagement outside of
+existing BookStack specific channels.
+
+
+
+All of our website analytics are accessible here: [BookStack Plausible Analytics Instance](https://analytics.bookstackapp.com/bookstackapp.com).
+
+### Going into 2022
+
+As of now, I'm still planning on spending the next 3 months focused on BookStack. My main focus will be
+on building the new editor. The next stage after that [on the roadmap is](https://github.com/BookStackApp/BookStack#%EF%B8%8F-road-map) is a permission system review but there may be a stage before this to
+heavily restructure the BookStack content database to support future plans in permission & URL handling.
+
+Over these next few months I'll be further assessing my own stance on BookStack work, exploring how maintainership
+fits in with my own career desires & if it's viable to work on BookStack full time.
+
+---
+
+<span style="font-size: 0.8em;opacity:0.8;">Header Image Credits: <span>Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@alken?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Alfred Kenneally</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/mountain-river?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText">Unsplash</a>
+ </span></span>
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