¶ Intro
BookStack is an opinionated wiki system that provides a pleasant and simple out-of-the-box experience. New users to an instance should find the experience intuitive and only basic word-processing skills should be required to get involved in creating content on BookStack. The platform should provide advanced power features to those that desire it but they should not interfere with the core simple user experience.
BookStack is not designed as an extensible platform to be used for purposes that differ to the statement above.
In regard to development philosophy, BookStack has a relaxed, open & positive approach. At the end of the day this is free software developed and maintained by people donating their own free time.
Based on Laravel, a PHP framework, BookStack is released under the MIT License. It uses the ideas of books to organise pages and store information. BookStack is multilingual and available in over thirty languages. For the simplicity, BookStack is considered as suitable for smaller businesses or freelancers
¶ Availability
Please check our application chart to see which GigaDrive Plans are eligible to install this application.
¶ Features
- Free & Open Source: BookStack is fully free and open, MIT licensed. The source is available on GitHub. There is no cost to downloading and installing your own instance of bookstack.
- Easy, Simple Interface: Simplicity has been the top priority when building BookStack. The page editor has a simple WYSIWYG interface and all content is broken into three simple real world groups:
- Searchable and Connected: The content in BookStack is fully searchable. You are able to search at book level or across all books, chapters & pages. The ability to link directly to any paragraph allows you to keep your documentation connected.
- Configurable: Configuration options allow you to set-up BookStack to suit your use case. You can change the name, logo and registration options. You can also change whether the whole system is publicly viewable or not.
- Simple Requirements: BookStack is built using PHP, on top of the Laravel framework and it uses MySQL to store data. Performance has been kept in mind and BookStack can run happily on a $5 Digital Ocean VPS.
- Built-In diagrams: The page editor within BookStack has
diagrams.netdrawing capability built-in, allowing the quick and easy creation of diagrams within your documentation. - Multi-Lingual: BookStack users can set their preferred language. Thanks to great community contributors, current languages built into BookStack include EN, FR, DE, ES, IT, JA, NL, PL, RU and many more.
- Optional Markdown Editor: If you prefer to write in Markdown then BookStack supports you. A markdown editor is provided and includes a live-preview as you write your documentation.
- Integrated Authentication: As well as the default email/password login social providers such as GitHub, Google, Slack, AzureAD and more can be used. Okta, SAML2 and LDAP options are available for enterprise environments.
- Powerful Features: On top of the powerful search and linking there is also cross-book sorting, page revisions and image management. A full role and permission system allow you to lock down content and actions as required.
- Multi-Factor Authentication: MFA is built in & can be enforced at a per-role level where desired. MFA options include TOTP (Google/Microsoft Authenticator, Authy, etc…) and static backup codes.
- Dark & Light Modes: BookStack provides it’s user interface in both a light theme and a dark theme, saving the eyes of those that prefer to work in the shadows. This is configurable at a user level.
¶ Installing BookStack
- Navigate to the Application Manager page and search for
bookstack. - Click icon to open the installation window and tap Install to start the installation process.
- Once the installation is complete, click icon to open the Access Info page. Then click Go To Application to access
bookstack.