Installation

Downloads

Download the latest releases of Pressbooks, McLuhan, and Aldine, as well as the latest releases of any other book themes you wish to install.

Installation (Manual)

IMPORTANT!

  • Do not install Pressbooks on an existing WordPress blog — create a new WordPress install instead.
  • Pressbooks works with PHP 7.1, 7.2 or 7.3 and (usually) the most recent version of WordPress right now. Lower versions are not supported.

Part 1: WordPress

  1. Install WordPress using the Famous 5-Minute Install.

  2. Create a Network of WordPress sites, i.e.:

  3. Edit the wp-config.php file and add the following:

define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);

  1. Login to the WordPress admin area. Navigate to Tools → Network Setup, click Install.

  2. Complete the steps printed on the screen (i.e. edit your wp-config.php and .htaccess files with the information provided).

Part 2: Pressbooks

  1. Copy the Pressbooks plugin folder to: /path/to/your/site/wp-content/plugins/*.

  2. Copy Pressbooks’ autoloader file from /path/to/your/site/wp-content/plugins/pressbooks/hm-autoloader.php to /path/to/your/site/wp-content/mu-plugins/hm-autoloader.php. You may need to create the wp-content/mu-plugins/ directory if it doesn’t yet exist.

  3. Copy the Pressbooks Book, Pressbooks Aldine and other theme folders to: /path/to/your/site/wp-content/themes/* (NOTE: theme folders must not have version numbers on the end. GOOD: pressbooks-aldine. BAD: pressbooks-aldine-3.1.0. Make sure that you rename the folders appropriately.)

  4. Log out, log in, navigate to: My Sites → Network Admin → Dashboard.

  5. Navigate to Plugins → Installed Plugins.

  6. Network Enable “Pressbooks”.

  7. Navigate to Themes → Installed Themes.

  8. Network Enable “McLuhan”, “Aldine”, and any other Pressbooks theme you want to use.

  9. Navigate to Settings → Network Settings.

  10. Pick the most appropriate Registration setting:

    • User accounts may be registered. (Do not use this setting, since it will not allow users to create new books!)
    • Logged in users may register new sites. (If you are a publisher using Pressbooks as a production tool, this is the best setting: it allows network administrators to add new users, who can then create books/sites. However, registration is not available to the public.)
    • Both sites and user accounts can be registered. (Use this setting if you intend on offering a publishing-platform open to the public, such as Pressbooks.com)

  11. Navigate to My Catalog → Your Site → Dashboard

  12. Navigate to Appearance and activate “Aldine”.

  13. Navigate to My Catalog → Add A New Book (this will be your first book).

  14. Navigate to My Catalog → Your First Book → Dashboard.

  15. Navigate to Book Info. Make sure to fill out Title, Author and Publication Date.

  16. Navigate to Text → Organize. Make sure some content is selected for export.

Part 3: Pressbooks Dependencies

Pressbooks requires some third-party libraries to be installed on your server to enable export capabilities.

  • For PDF export, you have three options:
    1. Configure DocRaptor, which is a software as a service version of PrinceXML. To do this, you just need to add your DocRaptor API key to wp-config.php: define( 'DOCRAPTOR_API_KEY', 'YOUR_API_KEY_HERE' );
    2. Install PrinceXML 12 on your server (note: this is not free software although you can use it free of charge for non-commercial purposes, see their license).
    3. Install the mPDF for Pressbooks plugin to use the open source mPDF library. (Note: As of May 2019 this project is unmaintained )
  • For MOBI export install KindleGen 2.9
  • For EPUB validation install EpubCheck 4.1.1
  • For XML validation install xmllint 20903
  • For ODT export install Saxon-HE 9.7.0-10
  • For the Cover Generator feature, install:
    • Ghostscript 9.18: sudo apt-get install ghostscript
    • ImageMagick 6.8.9: sudo apt-get install imagemagick
    • PdfToPpm and PdfInfo 0.41.0: sudo apt-get install poppler-utils
  • For MathJax export install (and host!) master branch of pb-mathjax
  • Certain Linux installations do not ship with the php-xsl library enabled by default. If you attempt to export an ePub and get a either a white screen with minimal text, or a “Fatal error: Class ‘XSLTProcessor’ not found” error, you may need to run a command like sudo apt-get install php-xsl.
  • Certain Linux installations do not ship with the php-exif library enabled by default. If you attempt to export an ePub and get a either a white screen with minimal text, or an error, you may need to install this extension (e.g. sudo apt-get install php-exif )
  • Linux installations do not ship with Microsoft fonts, which can be useful when producing PDF exports. See https://itsfoss.com/install-microsoft-fonts-ubuntu/ or similar for instructions on installing.

Unlisted versions are not supported. Upgrade/downgrade accordingly.

Once installed, define the following wp-config.php variables (make sure to update the paths to correspond to your specific installation). The defaults are:

define( 'PB_PRINCE_COMMAND', '/usr/bin/prince' ); // Only required if you are using Prince on your server
define( 'PB_KINDLEGEN_COMMAND', '/opt/kindlegen/kindlegen' );
define( 'PB_EPUBCHECK_COMMAND', '/usr/bin/java -jar /opt/epubcheck/epubcheck.jar' );
define( 'PB_XMLLINT_COMMAND', '/usr/bin/xmllint' );
define( 'PB_SAXON_COMMAND', '/usr/bin/java -jar /opt/saxon-he/saxon-he.jar' );
define( 'PB_MATHJAX_URL', 'http://localhost:3000/' );

Example config files for a dev site hosted at http://localhost/~example/textopress/

wp-config.php file [snippet]:

/**
 * For developers: WordPress debugging mode.
 *
 * Change this to true to enable the display of notices during development.
 * It is strongly recommended that plugin and theme developers use WP_DEBUG
 * in their development environments.
 */
define('WP_DEBUG', true);
define('WP_DEBUG_LOG', true);

/**
 * Multi-site support, Part 1
 */
define('WP_ALLOW_MULTISITE', true);

/**
 * Multi-site support, Part 2
 */
define('MULTISITE', true);
define('SUBDOMAIN_INSTALL', false);
$base = '/~example/textopress/';
define('DOMAIN_CURRENT_SITE', 'localhost');
define('PATH_CURRENT_SITE', '/~example/textopress/');
define('SITE_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1);
define('BLOG_ID_CURRENT_SITE', 1);

/**
 * Pressbooks
 */
define( 'PB_PRINCE_COMMAND', '/usr/bin/prince' );
define( 'PB_KINDLEGEN_COMMAND', '/home/example/bin/kindlegen' );
define( 'PB_EPUBCHECK_COMMAND', '/usr/bin/java -jar /home/example/bin/epubcheck/epubcheck.jar' );
define( 'PB_XMLLINT_COMMAND', '/usr/bin/xmllint' );
define( 'PB_SAXON_COMMAND', '/usr/bin/java -jar home/example/bin/saxon-he/saxon-he.jar' );
define( 'PB_MATHJAX_URL', 'http://localhost:3000/' );

/**
 * Optional definitions
 */
// define( 'AUTOSAVE_INTERVAL', 60 ); // Autosave every N seconds
// define( 'WP_POST_REVISIONS', 5 ); // Limit post revisions: int or false
// define( 'EMPTY_TRASH_DAYS', 1 ); // Purge trash interval. PB default is after 30 days.

/* That's all, stop editing! Happy blogging. */

.htaccess file:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /~example/textopress/
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]

# add a trailing slash to /wp-admin
RewriteRule ^([_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/)?wp-admin$ $1wp-admin/ [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f [OR]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -d
RewriteRule ^ - [L]
RewriteRule  ^[_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/(wp-(content|admin|includes).*) $1 [L]
RewriteRule  ^[_0-9a-zA-Z-]+/(.*.php)$ $1 [L]
RewriteRule . index.php [L]

Tip: Need a wp-cli deploy? Start here: https://github.com/pressbooks/snippets/blob/master/deploying/wp-cli-example.md

Edit this post on GitHub.