Publishing a Book at ST.U
Learn how to publish an open-source book on ShanTou.University using mdBook. Step-by-step guide covering book creation, GitHub deployment, DNS configuration, and custom domain setup.
At ST.U, everything is publicly accessible, and everything is open. Besides creating a blog page like ST.U・ShanTou.University, we can also publish (or, less formally, "release") a book.
Currently, a technical book called Leptos Chinese Guide has been launched as a sample project.
All the source code for this book is hosted on GitHub. It is generated using the open-source tool mdBook and published via GitHub Actions to GitHub Pages. We can access this book through leptos.ShanTou.University because ST.U added a CNAME DNS record, pointing letpos.ShanTou.University to ShanTouUniversity.github.io, and configured a custom domain in the corresponding repository.
The most crucial step in publishing a book at ST.U is adding that CNAME DNS record. If you need to publish a book, you should:
- Choose a tool you are familiar with, such as mdBook, Zola, or another static page generator;
- Deploy your book to a service like GitHub Pages, Vercel, Netlify, or Cloudflare Pages;
- Record your book's address, such as
ShanTouUniversity.github.io/leptos_cn; - Use your alumni email to send the desired subdomain and the above address to
dev@ShanTou.University; - After receiving a reply, you can configure the backend, and once successful, your book will be accessible at
xxx.ShanTou.University.
If the above steps are unclear, you can also send your manuscript to dev@ShanTou.University, and ST.U will use mdBook to create and publish the book on ST.U's GitHub organization, assigning it a suitable domain. You will then receive an email reply. If you need to revise your book, you can directly clone the repository and submit a PR, or simply open an issue in the repository (the easiest method).