Pressbooks on Cloudron - Open Source Book Publishing Platform

[LoudLemur]

Main Page: https://pressbooks.org/
Git: https://github.com/pressbooks/pressbooks
Licence: GPL v3.0
Docker: Yes
Demo: https://pressbooks.com/ (SaaS demo, self-hosted demo not publicly available)

Summary: Pressbooks is an open-source book publishing platform built on WordPress Multisite, designed for creating and publishing books in multiple formats, including PDF, EPUB, web, and various XML flavors. It uses a CSS-driven theming/templating system and is widely used by educational institutions, academic presses, small publishers, and individual authors for producing open educational resources, textbooks, scholarly monographs, and more. Pressbooks supports PHP 8.1 and WordPress 6.6.1, and its open-source nature allows for self-hosted deployments. A Docker-based local development environment is available via the pressbooks/local-dev-environment repository, leveraging Lando/Docker for testing and development.

Notes: Pressbooks is a powerful tool for anyone looking to publish professional-quality books, especially in educational or academic contexts. Its integration with WordPress Multisite makes it familiar for WordPress users, while its export capabilities cater to diverse publishing needs. The availability of a Docker-based local development environment

suggests potential for a Cloudron app, though it may require additional configuration for production use. A concern is that Pressbooks is designed for fresh WordPress Multisite installations, not existing blogs, which could complicate integration for some users. The active development (latest release v6.31.2 on July 30, 2025) and community support make it a promising candidate for Cloudron.

Alternative to / Libhunt link: No direct Libhunt link available for Pressbooks alternatives, but comparable platforms include BookStack (https://selfhosted.libhunt.com/bookstack-alternatives) and GitBook for book publishing and documentation.
Screenshots: Pressbooks Logo, Sample Pressbooks Dashboard

Notes on Docker State: The Pressbooks project provides a Docker-based local development environment through the pressbooks/local-dev-environment repository, which uses Lando/Docker to provision a Pressbooks instance for testing and development (). This setup includes dependencies like pressbooks/pressbooks and pressbooks/pressbooks-aldine via Composer (). However, there is no official production-ready Docker image for Pressbooks in the main repository

. For Cloudron integration, the development Docker setup could serve as a starting point, but additional work may be needed to create a production-ready Docker image, including proper configuration for WordPress Multisite and dependencies like PHP 8.1 and WordPress 6.6.1 ().

This app request is experimental and was created with AI.

[timconsidine]

Very promising, shame it is based on Wordpress

[jdaviescoates]

This is actually a duplicate of https://forum.cloudron.io/post/23522

[marcusquinn]

@timconsidine Still a fan of WP, here. Don't know that any of the JS stacks could do any better, considering WP is the OG bringing blogging to the masses, print seems a natural extension.