As the subject mentions - I’m looking to run Pressbooks locally on my own hosting and connect my own domains to the hosting. I’ve looked at the documentation but struggle to find anything specific. I’ve also tried reaching out to support through the contact form a couple of times but haven’t heard back.
I’m looking for something a user-friendly for an install process, if at all possible. I’m used to using WordPress’s GUI.
Any help is appreciated.
Thank you!
Hi @michaell, here are the instructions for installing Pressbooks locally: Local Development - Pressbooks. I don’t know what you mean by connecting your own domains to the hosting. If you’re trying to install Pressbooks on a server connected to the internet, perhaps try the instructions here Installation - Pressbooks
Hello @SteelWagstaff Thanks for your helpful reply.
I followed your instructions on Installation - Pressbooks. But I get an error when I get to:
Part 2:
6. Network Enable “Pressbooks”.
When I do that, I get the following error:
Plugin could not be activated because it triggered a fatal error .
Pressbooks dependencies are missing. Please make sure that your project’s Composer autoload file is being required, or use the latest release instead.
Any ideas what is going on?
Thanks so much!
I wanted to do the same thing, just author on my laptop. One route is to install the stack with virtualbox, vagrant, trellis, etc and WP multi-site, and install pressbooks on top of that.
But that is overkill because trellis is designed to deploy to a staging server then a production server. I just wanted to author books then feed end product to kindle or Barnes and Noble Press or a similar print on demand service.
SteelWagstaff suggested I could try to get a pressbooks account at my local library. That actually worked. Minnesota Library Publishing Project gave me a free pressbooks account and I have migrated one of my books to that platform. The library will just make it available online when I am done. I plan to buy a block of ISBN numbers.
This is first in a series, but the others I plan to perhaps publish in a different format such as kindle.
Ummm…I do not yet know how much space they will allow me. They do not seem to meter the space (so far).
Meanwhile I would love to learn the trellis stack, over time. And I would like to mention I did find a virtualbox appliance that just comes up with WP multi-site just running out of the box. That was sweet because I have a wordpress site or two that are not pressbooks. I did not get so far as to try to place PB on top of WP.
So, perhaps in your state you could consider a public library or similar organization.
Best Regards,
PS, Yes, the PB team could improve their documentation a bit. For example, vagrant 2.2.7 and VB 6.X seem not to be a supported combo as I recall. Very confusing. Hair pulling time. ;)~
@SteelWagstaff
I’ve got to this point now where I get this error:
The Pressbooks Book theme is not installed, but Pressbooks needs it in order to function properly. Please visit GitHub for installation instructions.
Any suggestions on how to proceed? The Pressbooks Book theme is installed yet this error appears.
Thank you for your assistance.
Update:
I’ve made it this far now when trying to Activate Aldine:
# Dependencies Missing
You must run composer install from the Aldine directory.
Please, any advice?
Hi @michaell, you’re posting a series of questions which seem to include their own answer. In this case, did you pay close attention to step 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.)
If so, have you tried going to the Aldine directory (/site/web/app/themes/pressbooks-aldine) and running composer install as the prompt suggests?
If neither of those steps work for you, there may be other users in the forum who can assist you having done the install more recently than I have. It’s been a long time since I’ve installed Pressbooks using these instructions so I’m afraid I can’t be of more assistance. As a very small team of core committers, we can’t provide detailed troubleshooting and support for open source users, as paying clients often take priority. Because Pressbooks is an open source project we welcome improvements to the documentation from open source users like yourselves. Here’s the docs for the process you’re working through: pressbooks.org/src/user-docs/installation.md at production · pressbooks/pressbooks.org · GitHub
I encountered the same issue previously, and it is caused by uploading the development package instead of the latest package of the Pressbooks plugin. There is another thread in the community I found with the explanation Installing Pressbooks.
Hope that helps!