First, I also handled the new book request this morning; Rob sent me a link for the pull request.
Please see my April 24 posting on the subject "The PreTeXt Catalog" for most details.
In short, web-based software was written which will allow an admin (or with confidence an author) to enter information creating or updating a new project for inclusion in the database. I placed these pages on my workstation at Dartmouth and sent David and Rob access information.
The current workflow would be as follows:
All these files live on my github page.
The files were posted to the workstation to be tested by potential admins for general use. I am presuming with all the recent PTX activity, they dropped off the radar.
This has purposely been left in a state that requires intervention. It makes sense to inspect the generated sql file before uploading it to the live database. Then the script to pass the database must be run. Then Rob takes the output and massages it a bit for the final product.
To host all of this, you need a server running mariadb (mysql) and php (as well as of course apache).
Cheers,
Tom