WebHelp Trouble Publishing

[kxg217]

Currently, when I try to publish my work to the web, I recieve "Failed to publish. reason: Canceled by user". Now I know I haven't cancelled it, so I'm assuming it has been timing out. I can publish perfectly fine to my hard drive, however I encounter problems when publishing to the web.

I've been using the FTP option. I know the server is being reached due to the creation of the project folder. I've tried numerous times to publish both to a folder being created by RH, and a folder I previously created.

Any suggerstions?

[Peter Grainge]

Welcome to the forum.

Any suggestions? Yes, use the Search link above. I am not trying to be unhelpful, it's just that you would have got an instant answer.

Click here for one answer.

[kxg217]

For the past 2 day, I done nothing but research. I've read that post as well as others that appeared to be even close to the troubles I'm having. Nothing seemed to help. Hense the reason I started my own thread.

[Peter Grainge]

My apologies. I misread the message.

Download an FTP application such as the free Filezilla. Using that see if you can see the server and upload any old file. I am thinking this is not a RH issue but something to do with what you can see, permissions etc.

Have you checked with your IT people that you do have the necessary permisions?

Try that and post back.

[kxg217]

Uploading via FileZilla works just fine.

Our IT department helped me set up the FTP access.

[Peter Grainge]

You may well find now that if you compare the Filezilla and RH settings that there is a small difference. Either that or the permissions are now as they should be.

[kxg217]

I know it has accessed the ftp server. It appears to have uploaded or tried to upload an image, there's a thumbnail present for it. However, there's nothing inside the file... the file size even says 0.
Couid this be a result of wrong premissions?

I stopped to talk to the guy who help set up my FTP access. and he said I should probably let you know I have access to the FTP server, but not the "root"

[Peter Grainge]

Get him to look at the wizard with you where you set up the server details.

I suspect it is as simple as needing some path details in the field "Server Directory" at the bottom of the form.

[kxg217]

He did that with me already. A matter a fact, he helped me set it up the first time. We started looking at the permissions more closely.... Do you know what permissions we need? - I've done some searching but I haven't found anything helpful for WebHelp and FTP Servers.

[Peter Grainge]

The permissions I am talking about are your permissions to write to the server. On that score I would have thought that if Filezilla can access it, then the permissions are correct.

Try using the File System option.

[kxg217]

Isn't that required to publish to the hard drive?

[Peter Grainge]

It can be used to publish to any location that is part of your network I believe. That appears to be the case and it might get around the problem you are having if the target is indeed part of your network. It's worth a try.

[Captiv8r]

Hi Peter and all

I'm just going to toss this out there and where it lands, it lands. I'm not going to go so far as to say this feature is buggy. BUT...

Long ago and in a far away place, when I was in the throes of a Corporate setting, I tried to use the RoboHelp ways of publishing. As I had FrontPage on my computer, I had the FrontPage option available to me. I tried almost all options in the publishing dialog and all (with the exception of File System) failed when I tried.

I would like to counter this with the fact that in my particular corporate setting, there were many "political" boundaries I faced with respect to being able to access assorted servers. It's so amazing to me how uncooperative and territorial that different departments can be. It's a wonder businesses ever manage to get anything accomplished (other than bickering between departments) but I digress. I say this only to say that I didn't really have decent resources available to me in which to troubleshoot and see if it was a permissions issue on the server or if it was that the publish bit is somewhat buggy with certain protocols (such as FTP). I DID manage to develop a rapport with the guys that ran the Web server, so they gave me a drive letter mapping to it. But by that time, I had become quite adept at ferreting out just what I wanted to push to the server and I just forever copied the files manually and left the publishing bit alone.

I sincerely wish you the best in getting it sorted and I'm sorry I wasn't really of any help here.

Just food for thought... Rick

[kxg217]

I've used the file system and I've successfully published to our network server.

Web is still unsuccessful

[Peter Grainge]

From what I can glean the target needs to have an FTP server running on it and that is usually available on Unix boxes but not Windows where it has to be set up specifically. Because that was not available, the FTP method was failing but because the target was visible via Windows Explorer, the File Publish method worked as that does not need the FTP server.

That would also explain what Rick describes.

In short for anyone facing this problem, if you can see the target via Windows Explorer, then use the File System method.

[kxg217 · Accepted solution]

After publishing to the network server and reading what Rich suggested...

I used a little drag and drop from the network server to filezilla and my FTP server.

Final result - my help file has been successfully uploaded to the FTP server and is currently live.

Thanks to both Peter and Rick for all their help.