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Formidable Forms To Structure A Manual?

By: Michael Clark | Asked: 06/26/2022
Forums › Category: General questions › Formidable Forms To Structure A Manual?
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Michael ClarkMichael Clark asked 2 years ago
Just curious. Wondering if anyone here has used Formidable to create and manage a manual or a book?
Bobby Clapp replied 2 years ago

I've used it in part with pages and forms as a software knowledgebase using forms to post changelogs and collect feedback like a ticketing system and things like that.

Michael ClarkMichael Clark replied 2 years ago

Thanks, Bobby. Sounds like an interesting an innovative use case, fully embracing the CM in CMS 😉

Brian Gasperosky replied 2 years ago

I'm currently managing three online handbooks for a college using WordPress. We're using WordPress Multisite, so each handbook has it's own site, and I built a fourth site to store campus policies. I'm using a plugin called Broadcast to distribute the policies to the handbooks, as some policies pertain to employees while others to students, and some pertain to everyone so they're in each of the sites. I built a report that identifies updates in each of the sites that employees have entered over the past month, and I built a process in LaTeX using TeXStudio to make it easy to convert the WordPress posts to LaTeX where a complier converts the LaTeX documents to PDF. Eventually I plan to fully automate this process using the WordPress API and I might replace LaTeX with groff at that point.

Victor Font replied 2 years ago

Hey Brian, this is an interesting process you've developed. I've never considered handing Formidable data off to a document preparation system before. Since you mentioned WordPress posts, it sounds like you're using Formidable to create CPTs and in turn using the CPT content with LaTex. I'd love to know more about the offload to LaTex process. Are you using a cron or on-demand trigger?

Michael ClarkMichael Clark replied 2 years ago

Brian! That's what I'm *talking* about! Your workflow sounds so clean. 🙂

1 Answers
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Victor Font answered 2 years ago
You want to create a book with Formidable? I suppose if it's purely for online viewing you can do it, but from my experience with authoring 14 books and publishing over 40 through my own publishing company, I have no idea how you could prepare a book for print or ereaders to meet outlet publishing guidelines. Books sold through any of the major outlets need to be formatted in very specific ways. With print books you need a center gutter. Print books also require an even number of pages for the print process. Printing in color is different from printing in black and white. eBooks should be ePub format, which is essentially a self-contained website. I don't know how you would format a book to meet those specifications with Formidable.
Michael ClarkMichael Clark replied 2 years ago

<p>Not sure i want to create a book with it, as to manage the content of it. 🙂 </p>

Victor Font replied 2 years ago

It certainly is a unique and innovative approach. Good luck with it.

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