Table of Contents as Home Page

[jdrews]

For Feature Requests

Desired Feature: Looking for a table of contents that we can set as the home page. The use case is to allow for a jump point for new visitors. They may not know what they're looking for so a search doesn't always work.

[Shackelford-Arden]

@jdrews

Are you looking for a table of contents to be auto-generated or are you simply looking for a way to set a custom home page that you've put together yourself?

You can already set any page as the home page for your bookstack instance by doing the following:

• Login
• Click Settings
• Adjust the option for Application Homepage

Would that help with what you're trying to do or are you looking for something else?

[jdrews]

I am looking for a table of contents to be generated. This is similar to the /books display, however I am looking for the contents of the books to be displayed as well (both chapters and pages).

After we can generate a table of contents, I'd like to place that as the home page.

[jdrews]

Thinking further, I could see a use case where there are so many pages that it could get unwieldy to display them on a table of contents. But for a smaller deployment it would be useful to see books, chapters, and pages on a table of contents.

Could the inclusion of pages be a configuration item?

[AbijeetP]

I'm assuming you are looking for something similar to this but across books,

[jdrews]

Yes Please!

[aljawaid]

Having a Table of Contents (just like creating and auto cross-referencing the same from Microsoft Word) would make the BookStack book very printer/pdf friendly too. If there was an ability to show or hide the page numbers, then the final generated offline paper version of the book would be a lot more professional.

Just sharing my opinion.

My use case: for certain business terms and policies in particular books, there is no user access, just a printed paper version. At the moment, there is no company logo, header/footer, or table of contents/index. Having that stuff would make the online/offline same copies of the books awesome-r! :)

[Wookbert]

@ssddanbrown @jdrews @littlebrighter

I am voting also for a full-fledged Table of Contents (ToC)/Index on the Homepage, and already spent some serious thoughts on this. Here’s a quick 'n dirty mockup:

• ToC on homepage, below existing blocks The existing blocks in the three columns should have the same maximal vertical length (in the above screenshot the middle block is too long. The lower left block should either be a) moved down a bit (this way the text/icons would vertically align across the three columns) or b) extended with white, so it aligns with the bottom of the middle block.

• ToC in 3 columns ... or 2? In my above mockup, I've used 3 columns and tried to horizontally align both icons and text with the 3 blocks above.
  
  The problem with 3 ToC columns as pictured above is that the 3rd column on the right exceeds the block. This is in part because when looking at the above 3 blocks and my yellow markings, you see the gap between block 1-2 and 2-3, but that gap space is not existing on right side of the 3rd block. The ToC lines of each column could run up to each yellow marking ... if we wouldn't have the problem with the 3rd column.
  
  Solution A: Ignore horizontal alignment of text/icon entirely and use a raster independent from the 3 blocks above
  
  Solution B: Go for 2 columns.

• Dealing with long headlines Shorten the text or wrap it into the next line? I guess I'd go for wrapping with shortening after the 3rd line.

• Icons & Colors The above mockup shows icons only for books. My next post hereunder shows a life, actually working mockup where we incorporate both icons and the color scheme of books, chapters and pages.

• Indention? Chapters don't have necessarily to be indented (other than shown in the above mockup), but can/could be on the same indention level as the book title itself. One should test to display chapters in italic, as they don't have actual content.
  
  Pages, Headline Large and Medium should be indented. Headline Small and Tiny could be on the same level? Question is: Are Headlines Tiny shown in the ToC? Down to which level do we go? Is this a user adjustable feature?

• Order of book appearance The above mockup has a sorting drop menu, similar to the Books and Shelves views. Sorting options should be Name, Created Date, Updated Date, Popular Books (how often a book gets opened, already exists in the left side navigation in the Books view; IMO a much needed sorting option).

[Wookbert]

The following screenshot shows a BookStack Table of Contents Hack my partner has coded. It's live, generated on-the-fly from the actual books and fully working – but of course is a separate HTML page not implemented into BookStack. Our current implementation work-around: We've created a book in BookStack named „Table of contents“, which we are redirecting using the Apache server to our HTML page.

[nathlx]

The following screenshot shows a BookStack Table of Contents Hack my partner has coded. It's live, generated on-the-fly from the actual books and fully working – but of course is a separate HTML page not implemented into BookStack. Our current implementation work-around: We've created a book in BookStack named „Table of contents“, which we are redirecting using the Apache server to our HTML page.

This looks great, did you publish this anywhere? or is it tied tightly to your implementation?

[jefry7]

Any progress on this feature? is there any way to get it?

[ccarlo88]

You are probably looking for something like this: #2477