Appendix A: Adapting this Guide
What is Pressbooks?
Pressbooks is a web-based authoring tool based on the WordPress authoring platform. If you’ve created a website using WordPress, you’ll find some similarities working with Pressbooks. Pressbooks allows you to create content once and publish it in many different formats. These export formats enable the resource to be easily imported and edited in different platforms such as WordPress, Wikis and even learning management systems. The formats appear at the bottom of the web version of the resource to allow other users to easily export and adapt the resource. These features will allow the resources we are developing to be used, adapted, contextualized and localized by different institutions and communities. Pressbooks will make the resource more available to different users by giving them the option of accessing it on the web, on their mobile devices or print it out as a PDF document. By designing each part of the resource as a standalone guide, institutions will be able to select and adapt the sections to use, edit, and adapt for their context. These features will allow the resources we are developing to be used, adapted, contextualized, and localized by different institutions and communities.
Export formats
| Print PDF | Allows documents to be easily shared while retaining the same visual formatting. It is page-oriented and has a static layout. Print PDF optimized for printing. |
| Digital PDF | For digital PDF distribution. |
| xHTML | This format allows the resource to used and edited in different systems. |
| WordPress XML | These files can be imported into WordPress and the resources can be easily adapted into an interactive website. |
| EPUB | EPUB files are designed for portability. These files are used for most eBooks and other eReaders. The point of these files is not to provide editing capability, but to deliver a comprehensive package that contains all elements of a book including text and images — like a zipped package — to a device for reading. |
| MOBI | For Kindle eReader. |
Ways that I can adapt this guide
Pressbooks is available to staff and faculty at all post-secondary institutions in B.C. at https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/. This allows each institution program or course to copy this guide into your own instance of Pressbooks and adapt it to include local content, context, and resources. You can then export the guide you have created into any of the different formats above. You can also import this guide into your local instance and revise it, localize it, and adapt it there. This will also enable you to add multimedia or even interactive components.
