BookStack gives a team a shared place to write and find documentation, from operating instructions to internal reference material. It is a wiki application with an editing experience aimed at people who are comfortable with ordinary word processors, so contributing does not require learning a developer publishing workflow. Use it when documentation needs an accessible home with managed access. Running it on Kubernetes still means preserving both its database and uploaded files.
Deployment and operating notes
The historical chart is an archived deployment package for the BookStack documentation application. BookStack’s own installation documentation is the authority for application requirements, while any container or chart must be assessed for its publisher and maintenance. A familiar chart name does not establish that its PHP runtime or database dependency meets current requirements.
For migration, preserve the database, uploaded content, configuration and application encryption key together. BookStack’s restore guidance specifically addresses restoring the database before starting a container-based application and updating the base URL when it changes. Rehearse this on a separate hostname and check attachments, permissions, authentication and internal links, not just the landing page. Review the target image’s UID, filesystem permissions and mounted upload paths before binding existing volumes. Keep the source instance read-only during a final copy if necessary to avoid diverging edits. A chart rollback is not a substitute for restoring the corresponding database and files after an application schema change.
Historical upstream link check · 2026-10-09
The recorded upstream address responded successfully (HTTP 200) on 2026-10-09. GitHub confirms that helm/charts is archived: this is a historical chart distribution, not evidence that the application itself is retired. Link availability does not certify the historical installation instructions or current security support.
Website availability is separate from project, chart and image support. Use the current guidance and primary sources on this page to assess the distribution.
Historical Kubedex content
Preserved for context. Commands, versions, prices and results below reflect the original research.
BookStack is an opinionated wiki system that provides a pleasant and simple out of the box experience. New users to an instance should find the experience intuitive and only basic word-processing skills should be required to get involved in creating content on BookStack. The platform should provide advanced power features to those
that desire it but they should not interfere with the core simple user experience.
BookStack is not designed as an extensible platform to be used for purposes that differ to the statement above.
In regards to development philosophy, BookStack has a relaxed, open & positive approach. Put simply, At the end of the day this is free software developed and maintained by people donating their own free time.
This chart bootstraps a Bookstack deployment on a Kubernetes cluster using the Helm package manager. It also uses the MariaDB chart which satisfies the database requirements of the application.
Translations
As part of BookStack v0.14 support for translations has been built in. All text strings can be found in the resources/lang folder where each language option has its own folder. To add a new language you should copy the en folder to an new folder (eg. fr for french) then go through and translate all text strings in those files, leaving the keys and file-names intact.
If a language string is missing then the en translation will be used. To show the language option in the user preferences language drop-down you will need to add your language to the options found at the bottom of the resources/lang/en/settings.php file. A system-wide language can also be set in the .env file like so: APP_LANG=en.
Prerequisites
- Kubernetes 1.9+ with Beta APIs enabled
- PV provisioner support in the underlying infrastructure
Code Standards
PHP code within BookStack is generally to PSR-2 standards. From the BookStack root folder you can run ./vendor/bin/phpcs to check code is formatted correctly and ./vendor/bin/phpcbf to auto-fix non-PSR-2 code.
Sources & further reading
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