What are books?

Books are publications that contain multiple posts under one title. They allow members to collaborate on publications. They also allow individual members to publish a series under one title. Readers can then read each post in sequence and page back and forth between them. This allows the series to be presented as one publication. When viewed in "printer-friendly version" all of the posts can be seen on one long page. To view books, click the "books" link under navigation in the left sidebar. When you open a book page a navigation tool that opens in the left sidebar. A good example of how the book content type can be used is here.

To create a book, click "create content", then "book page" under navigation in the left sidebar. This will open the "create book" page. At the top you see the title box. For the first page this should be the book title. Under the title box is a parent box. For the first page you want to leave it as it is (top-level). Now create the intro page to the book giving a brief summary of what the book is about and then publish it. You can either use the rich text editor for this or just type directly into the text box. Once you have entered the text for the first page click preview then submit buttons at bottom of page. After the page is created you should see a link at the bottom that says, “add a child page”. Click that link and it opens another book page. This time you want your book title page you just created in the parent box and you will want that in all the parent box's of all the subsequent pages. Add the content for this page and submit it. Repeat the process for as many pages as you want to publish in the book. Just remember to keep the original title to the book in the parent box. This will create a "table of contents" on the introduction page.

Cross posting in a book is just like cross posting a diary. First you have to create the introductory page. Then follow the instriutions above to open add a child page. Copy the original published page from the site where it was posted. This is the same page that visitors read, not the page you published from. Highlight what you want to copy with your mouse then press Ctrl+C . That will save it into the clipboard so you can paste it. On the book page there is a very large text box with the word body on top. At the bottom of the text box is a link that says (open rich editor) When you click on the link it will open a text editor in a pop up window. Sometimes the window is minimized when it opens and you will see it in the toolbar at the bottom of your computer screen. (make sure you do not have a pop-up blocker activated in your browser) Once you have the text editor opened orient your mouse in the upper left corner and press Ctrl+V. This will paste the content into the text editor. In the lower left corner is an OK button click it and the pop up window closes. This can be a little confusing because it disappears. If you go back to the book page you will see everything is in the text box with all of the necessary HTML formatting tags in place. Click preview at the bottom of the page then submit and it is published. Open a new book page as noted above and copy and paste from the published page again. Repeat the process until you have posted all of the pages in your book. The two most important aspects to cross-posting to this site are, make sure you copy from the published page, the one that visitors read and that you copy into the “rich editor” box.