Project is published, but not showing up on help site

[jbroggi]

I published a project to my help site but for some reason it is not showing up on the help site. When I look on the server, I can see a folder for the help project, and it contains all the help project items. However, the book icon for the help file doesn't show in the help site TOC, so there is no way to access the project. I've deleted the project and republished, but that doesn't help. We noticed that there were error messages about the index creator not being able to open some files, so I republished those projects without the files, but still the project is not showing up.


I am using Robohelp v5. Does anyone have suggestions as to what could be going on here? I would appreciate any help!!

Thanks,
Jenny

[RoboWizard]

Hi Jenny

I like to take the simple route first. Cover the basics.

Does the help work when you run it on your local PC before it gets to the server? If yes, then a breakdown is occurring with the process of uploading or otherwise placing the files.

If no, you have other issues to deal with.

Which is it?

Cheers... Rick

[jbroggi]

Well Rick, don't I feel foolish The reason why it wasn't showing up was because I hadn't created a TOC for it! Once I viewed it from my PC I realized this, and was able to fix it. (In my defense, it has been many months since I've worked with RH - higher priority projects have taken over my to-do list!)

Thanks for your help.

[RoboWizard]

Hi Jenny

No need to feel foolish. Heaven knows that I myself have done things just like that more often than I care to remember! That's where places like this forum help. I usually get stuck in that "Can't see the forest for all those stinkin trees in the darn way!" syndrome.

Hope your day is a good one! Rick

[Edwardo]

I'm having this same problem, but I do have a TOC. Let me also say that, like Jenny, I haven't used any version of RH for a while, so I'm trying to recover lost knowledge.

I have an old RH5 project that I sometimes use as a work sample. I used to publish the project and then create a shortcut to the starting page for anyone who wanted to view the sample. My starting page is Encorr_Online_Help.htm, and I thought I had used that same file to launch the published product, but it no longer seems to work.

Since I now have RH7, I imported my RH5 project hoping that I could publish anew it and launch it from a directory. The project imported beautifully; as far as I can tell, everything works fine. I can regenerate, view, and publish, and I haven't had a single error (at least not yet). But I still cannot launch my help system from the OS directory independent of RoboHelp.

I haven't deployed this project to a server. It's still on my local machine. I designated a directory called Published, and all of my individual files appear there. But if I launch the starting page designated in the project properties, all I get is a solitary HTML file shown in my HTML editor.

I might add that, for a product that's used to create online help, RoboHelp 7 has one of the worst, most non-intuitive help systems that I have ever used.

Eddie

[HKabaker]

Eddie,

At the top of the very first dialog in WebHelp output, the last item in the string is the WebHelp launch file. You can make this anything you want, regardless of the project's title or filename, and it should not be the same as the default topic's filename.

Harvey

[Edwardo]

quote:

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Originally posted by: HKabaker
Eddie,

At the top of the very first dialog in WebHelp output, the last item in the string is the WebHelp launch file. You can make this anything you want, regardless of the project's title or filename, and it should not be the same as the default topic's filename.

Harvey

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Thanks, Harvey. I found the equivalent file in the Published directory, and it does launch the entire system. Problem solved.

Eddie