BookStack

Overview

BookStack is a simple, well-organized wiki. Content is arranged in a structure everyone understands: shelves hold books, books hold chapters, and chapters hold pages. It’s ideal for internal procedures, onboarding guides, policies, and knowledge bases.

Main capabilities:

• A clean WYSIWYG editor, or a Markdown editor with live preview.
• Images, attachments, tables, code blocks, callouts, and diagrams drawn with the built-in diagrams.net integration.
• Revisions for every page, with comparison and restore.
• Full-text search with filters (by tag, type, date, author).
• Tags and templates for consistent page layouts.
• Roles and permissions down to individual books, chapters, and pages.
• Export of pages, chapters, and books to PDF, HTML, Markdown, or plain text.
• Page comments, a recycle bin, and an audit log for administrators.

What it replaces

BookStack replaces Confluence and similar wiki and knowledge base tools such as Notion (as a wiki), GitBook, and Guru.

Signing in

Open your BookStack address and sign in with your organization account.

Structure your content

Chapters are optional; a book can contain pages directly. Shelves are optional too, but they make browsing easier once you have more than a handful of books.

Write and edit pages

1. Open a book or chapter and choose New page.
2. Write in the editor. Use the toolbar for headings, lists, links, tables, and callouts. Paste or drag images straight in.
3. Choose Save page. Drafts save automatically while you type, so you won’t lose work if your browser closes.

To switch to Markdown for yourself, open your profile, My account, Preferences, and change the editor. Administrators can choose the default editor for everyone.

Revisions

Open a page’s Revisions from the page menu to see who changed what. Use Preview or Changes to compare, and Restore to roll back.

Templates

Mark any page as a template (in the editor’s sidebar). When creating pages, insert a template from the same sidebar. Books can also have a default template for new pages.

Find things

• The search box searches titles, content, and tags. Use the filters on the results page to narrow down, or search for an exact phrase in quotes.
• Tags (for example status: draft or team: finance) are searchable with [status=draft].

Control who sees what

Permissions are role-based. By default, roles such as Admin, Editor, and Viewer apply everywhere. To restrict a specific book, chapter, or page:

1. Open it and choose Permissions.
2. Override the role permissions for that item, for example letting only the HR role view the HR book.

Roles are managed under Settings, Roles. If your organization maps directory groups to BookStack roles, role membership follows group membership in Superpanel.

Export and share

From a page, chapter, or book, choose Export and pick the format. PDF works well for printing policies; Markdown or HTML is useful for moving content elsewhere.

Administer BookStack

Administrators see Settings in the header:

• Customization: app name, logo, colors, and a custom home page (for example a specific shelf or page).
• Features & Security: whether public (signed-out) viewing is allowed, comments, and registration.
• Maintenance: empty the recycle bin and clean up unused images.
• Audit log: see who did what and when.

Superpanel settings

• Access: choose which groups can sign in to BookStack.
• Administrators: choose who gets the BookStack Admin role.