Creating a Pressbook and Adding Content
First Things First
If you already have a Pressbooks account, you can skip down to Log in. If not, you have to create a Pressbooks account. Go to the PSU Pressbooks Registration page and click “Sign Up” in the upper right of the page.
You will be taken to the Registration page.
Fill out the fields for your name, email, and password; then click the button labeled “Next”. You will receive an email with a link to activate your Pressbooks account. NOTE: you have 2 days to activate your account after which you have to sign up again.
If this is your first time in Pressbooks, you will see this screen where you can create your first book:
You can also go to the PSU login for Pressbooks and click “Create a Book” (navigation bar) in the upper right.
If you already have created books, click on the “Create Book” button at the top of your Dashboard.
This will take you to the “Create a New Book” page.
Log in
Go to Penn State’s Pressbooks login and click on “Sign in” in the upper right.
Or… you can paste the URL of your book into the address field of your browser, for example: https://psu.pb.unizin.org/yourbookhere/
This way you will log into the PSU instance of Pressbooks.
If you try to log in to the Pressbooks Website rather than Penn State’s instance of Pressbooks, you won’t have access to your book.
Login and you will be taken to your book’s Home page.
From the Home page, click on the Admin link in the upper right which takes you to your book’s Dashboard.
From the Dashboard, you can access a user’s most frequent tasks, including creating a new book, cloning a book, editing your book’s information, organizing chapters, managing book users, and more.
Below we will discuss the Organize page.
Organize
The Organize page is a one-stop shop for all your content structure needs which includes adding, deleting and rearranging:
- parts
- chapters
- front matter (introductions, acknowledgements, etc)
- back matter (appendices, glossary, index)
Paradigm Shift
Traditionally when you think of a book, most think in terms of chapters and pages. Pressbooks thinks in terms of Parts and Chapters. For inner peace and harmony, repeat:
- Parts = chapters
- Chapters = pages
How to get to the Organize page
Click on Organize near the top of the Left Sidebar Menu.
The Organize page
The Organize page gives you an overview of your entire book and is an easy way to access and then edit all of your book’s Parts, Chapters and Front and Back Matter.
This is also where you can set your book to be “Private” or “Public” at the top of the page.
Hovering over Parts in the left column displays options of:
- Edit: takes you to the Editor
- Trash: deletes the Part; but the chapters from that Part will now appear at the end of the 1st Part. NOTE: there is no warning… no “Are you sure?” to confirm. However, the Part will be moved to the Trash, where you can Restore it for up to 30 days.
- View: takes you to what the Part will look like viewed on the web
Hoveri