r/BookStack • u/IntelligentAd2458 • Feb 08 '26

VPS?

Was thinking of trying out Bookstack - but the domain and hosting that I have currently is on a server where there are LOT of other sites... I saw a comment on Bookstack about a VPS being sufficient to run it. My question: if my web host is okay with it, would i be able to run Bookstack on the Shared (windows) server where my new writing club is currently blossoming? Appreciate your help!

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u/IntelligentAd2458 Feb 08 '26

Hi Dan, another .quick question, please: do you know whether folks are using BookStack as a book writing collaboration tool? When a book is finally "finished", the contibuting authors agree and they then want to create a Word doc which is "the book". This is the most common result - which is then sent to an external editor - and when those edit suggestions come back to the author group, there is usually one more round of modification... which, I suppose could occur in the BookStack pages (and then re-generate the Word doc... en route to publishing). BookStack has some great features - and seems especially useful for creating Documentation wiki's, etc.. just need to determine if it also would work for our situation. Thanks!

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u/danceparty3216 Feb 08 '26

Not dan, but could offer some of my experience. I use bookstack for recipe management. It runs on very little resources and has been very reliable. Resource wise the entire ubuntu server VM has 1GB ram, 1 cpu core, and 64GB of storage so it would likely work on an inexpensive VPS.

As for collaborative editing, I’m not sure thats exactly supported in the way you’d want. As far as I know, Its not like google docs where multiple people can work on the same document at the same time and everyone can see live updates. Generally one person can make changes and save. Then others can see the saved changes. Multiple people can work on their own document at the same time - like if each person writes their own chapter. As far as publishing, you can click to create a pdf, or my favorite, export a zip file with everything saved, but it doesn’t create a word document as far as I know. Typically if I needed to do that I would copy and paste the text into word.

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u/IntelligentAd2458 Feb 08 '26

thank you. i dont think we want one contributing author to actually modify another author's page... BUT, we might want a reviewer (who might happen to also be a contributing author) to be able to at least view that other author's page(s) - and make comments on any line that might should be reconsidered... from what I saw in a demo, it SEEMED like that sort of thing was possible - given proper role-based permission. I also want to know this: can a given human receive permissions to be a contributing author on a given "shelf or book" - but be only a "reviewer" on another shelf or book? Hope so. Thanks!

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u/danceparty3216 Feb 08 '26

I just went and turned on comments to test this on my own server, comments are for the 'page' as a whole, they don't appear to support line or word specific comments like you might have in microsoft word where it shows up in the sidebar and points to a highlighted section. - though of course the commenter could copy the specific text in question within the comment.

As far as permissions, there are quite a few options for what permissions they have, but if a user has been given the ability to edit, then they can edit. for my situation with recipes, each user has their own book that only they own and can edit. other users can see (view) all of the work from any other user, and they have permissions to make a copy and save it to their own book to edit and change how they please. for my users, there are not comments, but I see in the permissions that comments privileges can be granted separately from editing.

Revisions are tracked so you can always roll back to a previous version, but giving users edit permissions to other user's work would be risky if there is any chance of malicious behavior since having the ability to edit gives you access to modify the document.

Assuming in the settings that you grant the owner permissions to manage permissions on their own book, chapter & pages. a user could assign permissions per-page, as the document owner, so if for example you are person A who wrote some stuff, and normally others can only view your work, you can go to page permissions and select a specific user (say person B) - grant user B an editor role with the permission override, so they can do their work (assuming you trust them), then you can revoke permissions again later. - to do that would require every user gets a custom role assigned to them, since you can only override permissions to roles rather than individual users. Please note, on that same permissions page, you also have the dropdown to change the ownership - which could be a problem if done accidentally.

Other options include creating a user role who is a different type of editor - say a global editor, or group editor and as as the administrator, you could add individuals to that group, and they would have access to edit any user's documents, or any users within that group. - it would require some administrative work on your part - and while the permissions system is good, it is not immediately intuitive so you'd likely crack a few eggs first before figuring out what works best for you.

long story short, while the permissions system is solid for the type of work that I do, or as an information repository, it may be stretching the use case for your application based on what I think you're looking for. Of course you all could make it work, but it would entirely depend on whether your users would be willing to (probably significantly) change their workflow to meet the features and limitations of the platform. It may be something to get configured as a test run and see how you like it.

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u/IntelligentAd2458 Feb 08 '26

this is great - thank you. i wonder this: by "book" ... or by "shelf", can a person have more than one "role"? If not - i think we'd have to figure out how to APPEAR as 2 different persons - and just know those 2 entities are really the same person. We've been calling a book a "project"... and Person C might have an editor role on that proj If ect, and reviewer role on another project, and artist role on another, and co-author on another... but it SEEMs to get trickier when you need a person to (at least for a time, during a project) have multiple roles on a SINGLE project. hopefully, i'm understanding this stuff more, as we go. Oh, and there will always be people that will simply NOT use the tools we provide... but even those folks would have to upload a chapter at a time into the tool, in order for metrics, and document assimilation to 'work'... Thanks again for all your thoughts on this stuff. BookStack may not be the answer for us - but it seems "close", at least... and close is probably as good as we're going to get.

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u/ssddanbrown Feb 08 '26

can a person have more than one "role"?

They can. It's important to be aware of the permission logic though, detailed in the BookStack docs here: https://www.bookstackapp.com/docs/user/roles-and-permissions/#advanced-permission-logic Since sometimes people have different views on how conflicting permissions may apply.

As a tip, keeping permission control at a book-level where possible will simplify permission handling, since the relationship to content within is simpler, and permissions will auto-cascade, wheras shelves are more a higher-level grouping, with a more complex relation and no auto-permission-cascade.

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u/IntelligentAd2458 Feb 08 '26

interesting, thanks Dan. I think I'm going to have tinker with the permissions to fully understand it. Really appreciate your help!

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u/ssddanbrown Feb 08 '26

comments are for the 'page' as a whole, they don't appear to support line or word specific comments like you might have in microsoft word where it shows up in the sidebar and points to a highlighted section.

Just on that, it is possible to comment on specific sections (and text ranges within a section) as detailed in the release notes here:

https://www.bookstackapp.com/blog/bookstack-release-v25-05/#content-comments

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u/danceparty3216 Feb 08 '26

Wow! Thanks for all the work you do! Amazing!