User Documentation

BookStack allows its content to be exported in a range of formats, while also providing a few options for importing content. Note that these options are not intended for backup or restore, for which you can find relevant documentation here.

While BookStack has a hierarchy at the center of the platform to organise content, you can sometimes desire an extra dimension of categorisation for content. Tags in BookStack offer this in a flexible manner, where a tag can represent a category and value across all levels & parts of the hierarchy.

Within BookStack you can attach files & links to pages, so they can be referenced within content and shown available for download. Access to attachments is controlled via view permissions to the page they’re uploaded to, so users can only access attachments for pages they can view in the system.

There are many ways to get around and find content within your BookStack instance outside of following the core hierarchy. Below is an overview of some common options.

Within BookStack you can mark a page as a template so that its content can easily be reused when editing and creating pages. This can be super useful when you need to create many pages following a similar format.

BookStack has built-in support for creating and editing drawings via integrating with diagrams.net. This integration provides very powerful drawing/diagram editing capabilities for a range of use-cases. By default BookStack will use the online version of diagrams.net but this is configurable by an admin.

Within BookStack the abilities of a user are controlled by the roles assigned to them and the permissions provided to those roles. A user can be assigned multiple roles, in which case the permissions will stack and the user will receive any ability if any of the roles is provided that specific ability.

The URL for a page within BookStack includes a “Slug” generated based upon the name in addition to a “Slug” generated from the parent book’s name. Upon name changes of the book or page, BookStack will use the revision system to attempt resolving when old links are used but it is possible for some actions to cause old page links to no longer lead to the updated content.

The principles of storing information within BookStack is based of the ideas of a normal stack of books. Just like normal books, BookStack books can contain chapters and pages. You start off by creating a book which acts as the highest level of categorisation. Ideally you’d have separate books for separate topics.

The default editor in BookStack is a ‘What You See Is What You Get’ (WYSIWYG) editor. The usage of this editor is similar to typical word-processing applications such as Word or Google Docs. For those that would prefer it, there is an alternative Markdown Editor which can be set as default or switched to where permissions allow.

If you prefer to write in a simpler format, a Markdown editor is available in BookStack. Markdown compatibility generally follows that of CommonMark, along with a few extensions including tables and task-lists. This is an alternative to the default WYSIWYG Editor.

The ability to search your documentation is vital to day-to-day use. There are a few locations within BookStack where you can search for your content. Below is a list of search functions within BookStack:

Within BookStack you may find that you want to include the same block of content in multiple places. You could copy and paste that content into multiple pages but then, if that content needs to be changed, you’d have to update it multiple times across different pages. By using include tags you can include entire other pages and also include single blocks of content from other pages.

Once your BookStack instance starts to grow you will find that you may want to re-organise your content. Within BookStack there are two options for moving content around; Either you can move pages and chapters individually or you can sort entire books.