Pressbooks is an authoring platform built on the popular WordPress publishing and blogging website. If you have used WordPress in the past, Pressbooks should feel familiar. Pressbooks allows you to create content once and publish it in many formats including a website, PDF document, EPUB (usable in most eReaders), MOBI (for Kindle readers), and various editable files.

This Pressbooks Guide does not replicate information provided by the Pressbooks Userguide published by Pressbooks.com. Instead, in parts and chapters laid out to mimic the steps an author might take to create or modify an open textbook in Pressbooks, it redirects readers to pertinent chapters in the Pressbooks Userguide, supplements it with additional information, and includes instructions specific to post-secondary faculty and staff working in British Columbia and the Yukon.

Guide layout

Each section of this guide begins with a list of topics covered in its chapters. Key terms, specific to Pressbooks and its features, are set in bold and defined in the text body as well as summarized in the Glossary. This guide does not come with an index. Instead, use the search field located in the top-right of each page in the online version to locate a specific topic. The URLs for all external links are provided by chapter for print users in Appendix B.

Pressbooks Userguide chapters are highlighted with a textbox containing the Pressbooks (PB) logo and a link to the material. (See example below.)

For more information, see Writing Directly in Pressbooks in the Pressbooks Userguide.

When appropriate, chapters within this Pressbooks Guide are mentioned in a shaded textbook. (See example below.)

Links to chapters in other BCcampus Open Education guides and toolkits are also included in a shaded textbox to complement the Pressbooks material. (See example below.)

If information is missing about a specific feature, this is noted as “MORE TO COME” in a standard textbook. (See example below.)

Items to take note of are marked with “IMPORTANT.”

Finally, outstanding Pressbooks issues are identified and, if available, coupled with a temporary work around in coloured textboxes. (See example below.)

Updates and development

The Pressbooks development community is very active and attentive to the needs of its users, and strive to keep and improve this platform for optimal functionality. As features are added or changed, the information in this guide will be updated, and noted on the Versioning History page. Go to the Pressbooks Updates page for upcoming and past upgrades, urgent issues, and the most current version of the BCcampus Pressbooks instance.