Welcome to BookStack - An Introduction to the Platform

Welcome to BookStack! This video will provide an introductory overview of what BookStack is and the features it includes so you can assess if it can serve your needs as a documentation platform.
► BookStack Website: www.bookstackapp.com/
► BookStack Install Docs: www.bookstackapp.com/docs/adm...
► BookStack Demo Instance: demo.bookstackapp.com/books/b...
► BookStack Discord: / discord
► Follow BookStack on Mastodon: fosstodon.org/@bookstack
► Follow BookStack on Twitter: / bookstack_app
► Follow me on Mastodon: fosstodon.org/@danb
Background music is "Modern Situations" by "Unicorn Heads".
0:00 What is BookStack
0:21 Content Structure
0:51 Structure Example
1:20 Navigation Methods
1:50 Content Editors
2:07 Editor Abilities & Content Support
3:26 Top Features
6:08 Outro
#opensource #selfhosted #documentation #wiki #bookstack #foss

[@Bear-zl5ic]

I was looking for a solution to pitch to my company to stop the chaos of documentation in sharepoint. I can’t believe this is open-source. It looks incredible.

[@SohailMuzammil-w5g]

Thank you for your incredible dedication and hard work. Your project has made organizing information so much easier for us, and your tool is invaluable for managing knowledge effectively. We truly appreciate the effort you’ve put into it and the positive impact it has had on our workflow.

[@BookStackApp]

Thank you very much for the kind message, Good to hear BookStack provides a lot of value to you!

[@tanyacharbury4728]

I am starting a new project to help Marketing Departments clean up their chaos, and I have the back end figured out pretty well. The front end ... not so much, until a friend introduced me to BookStack. Wow. :-)

[@BookStackApp]

Thanks, I hope BookStack works out well for your use-case!

[@walterrossi6676]

Such a superb piece of software, one of my favorite docker containers in my home server. A must, I highly recommend it!

[@ntq1ty]

Very nice, succinct overview!

[@michellamie]

Seriously awesome! After considering a lot of alternatives me and the company are jumping onboard. Thanks for this great video, keep up the good work!

[@BookStackApp]

Thanks Michel!

[@angelosalexiou]

Excellent. Thanks for sharing...

[@christianjohansson8293]

We started using it a bit over a year ago, really like it. Even got another IT department to start using it :)

[@maciejlebiest4976]

One of the applications that increase your satisfaction just because you use it, no matter what for.

[@readtogether-podcast]

This is so amazing!!!

[@potterriffic]

This is awesome

[@HyperUpscale]

This is just WOW 🤩 The most wanted functions in one place ... for free 🤯 I still can't believe it - is it the demo so good or it is the BookStack indeed ... I will definitely spend a lot of time with it to check it out - it looks perfect for me! Thank you, man

[@jareksobanski7196]

Best of the best. Many thanks !

[@benm4nn]

Awesome work Mr Brown!

[@BookStackApp]

Thanks!

[@redrockspring]

Powerful tool. It’s application is endless.

[@samislam2746]

Wow, why would anyone make such a highly extensive and huge project completely free and open-source to the world? if this software would be sold, it would cost the customer over 3 million dollars. Amazing work. Thanks!

[@MrMcGerdi]

We'll start using BookStack in our 40 heads IT-Department. Great piece og Software! :)

[@BookStackApp]

Thanks! That's awesome, hope it works out well for you!

[@micro7567]

thanks you very much

[@raiwet]

Wow! I can't believe I just found out about this!

[@micro7567]

4:14 thank for excellent RTL languages support ❤❤💕💕

[@Vrx-yp1eu]

brah, this is the fucking giga-chad of documentation!

[@markssullivan]

Dammit Barry ... get it together!

[@BookStackApp]

And remember, No Slacking!

[@Haranza]

Love your product! Is it possible to have some shelves / books publicly accessible from the Internet without an account?

[@BookStackApp]

This is possible but you'd need to make the whole instance publicly accessible (Option in settings) then manage access via the "Public/Guest" user and role. You could remove all permissions for that role then selectively assign it to "Public" books. To be honest it'd be a bit awkward to manage if you're only sharing a few things, but still possible. Private-link based sharing, for content within a non-public system, is something I'd like to achieve in the future though.

[@rafaelg8238]

Hi, I have been getting error: 'failed to register layer: failed to Lchown "/dev/console" for UID 0, GID 0: lchown /dev/console: no such file or directory'

[@hypotechstudio3175]

can you create a video on backups ?

[@BookStackApp]

I'll keep that in mind for a future video idea!

[@richiroproductions8262]

Hey quick question on exporting. If i Have multiple sites that are isolated from each other, and each site is writing it's own Book. Am I able to have each site's book be exported and imported to the different sites? Example: LocA has book "IT-West". LocB has book "IT-East". For cross-training and coverage, we'd love for both West and East to cover or backup the other side by being able to export 'IT-West" to be imported into the East's instance of Bookstack, and "IT-East" to be exported and imported into the West's Bookstack? (Internet/web-based is not an option and there is no direct conduit between West/East (so assume CD/DVD backup and transfer to the other location). Thanks so much!

[@BookStackApp]

Hi! There is no partial import/export system currently built in to support this flow. You can export at various levels but the format is not directly importable. Are backup/restore guidance is whole-instance-level.

[@richiroproductions8262]

@@BookStackApp is that something that may come down the line? I noticed you said the next version will have more things available for export? Thanks so much for the quick response!

[@richiroproductions8262]

Another quick question about Security. I noticed that the PUBLIC role has no rights to create bookshelves, but it has rights to view bookshelves for OWN and ALL. 1) Is it necessary to click OWN when ALL is already checked? 2) Is it necessary or make sense to give it rights to view bookshelves it OWNs when it does not have rights to create bookshelves? Just wanted to better clarify for my understanding how the roles/permissions work. Thanks!

[@BookStackApp]

1) No, not really. I don't think having own in addition to all changes anything currently. 2) You could have a scenario where another user creates something then changes it's ownership, to a user that didn't have create permissions them selves. For example, An admin could create a book then change the owner so a less-privileged user could create/edit/delete within their own book, using the "Own" permissions.

[@richiroproductions8262]

btw.. i would love to test COMMENTS feature. It doesn't seem the GUEST account (public role) can do this. Could you add an account (public and viewer) and a page on each account that has the ability to "comment" on a "How to Use Comments" page please? (I am thinking of using Comments to help with Life Cycle Management of page content for my team- aka "this article is out of date and Section A now needs to say Sectino B. Please update this page" type of thing). Thanks!

[@BookStackApp]

An admin-level account login is available for the demo: demo.bookstackapp.com/books/bookstack-demo-site/page/logging-in-to-the-demo-site

[@richiroproductions8262]

@@BookStackApp ahhh thank you! figured out what i needed to on comments :)

[@pokamtchawa8717]

Hi , please any idea whether this can integrate with azure cognitive search to train Open ai service?

[@BookStackApp]

There's nothing built in for that, but it's maybe possible via the API. I talk about LLM usage, and show an integration example, in my video here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/joe0n3l6aceiq8k&si=8dteDKUjUQG47yiM

[@markusklyver6277]

Based

[@zoltan7195]

Is it possible, to get email notification as the book/chapter/page owner, once a comment is created inside it?

[@BookStackApp]

That is not a built-in feature at this time.

[@zoltan7195]

@@BookStackApp Would be nice to see this function in a future release, the product is awesome, kep up the good work.

[@renzrowendeleon993]

Are all this free to use?

[@BookStackApp]

Yep!

[@ahafeezs]

is there any git/git-lfs integration?

[@BookStackApp]

No, no git integration built-in.

[@ahafeezs]

@@BookStackApp is there any possibility to connect database such as MySQL?

[@BookStackApp]

@@ahafeezs Yeah, BookStack requires MySQL (or MariaDB) to function.

[@ahafeezs]

@@BookStackApp Perfect, do you mind pointing me to its doc?

[@pseudolemon8272]

Great video, the music is REALLY distracting.

[@BookStackApp]

Thanks! And yeah, sorry, I don't usually use BG music on my videos since they're guidance but thought this kind of quick-tour video could do well with some music. Probably didn't get the balance right here.

[@msmithsr01]

Is anyone running Bookstack on Docker?

[@BookStackApp]

Yeah, many users are running BookStack on docker, most commonly using the linuxserver.io image. I have a video here where I setup the system on docker: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mpOnq4N_q512nJo

[@adeyup5139]

Just found BookStack - Brilliant