Generate Primary Layout - Only generate changes

[tom_bradley]

RoboHelp HTML 8

Every time I want to update our Help pages I click on the "Generate Primary Layout" button, this clears out the folder and reuploads everything from scratch. Bad times! This means our help pages are offline and any customers accessing them during the publishing time will get a horrible error page. As our help pages are now quite big this publish time is taking a non-trivial amount of time.

Is there a way of robohelp to ONLY publish changed files so the help pages don't go offline?

(Of course I could generate it to a separate folder then copy it to the online site... but if there is a way of avoiding that extra step it would be good!)

[Peter Grainge]

I think something is wrong with your process as it should not take things offline, unless maybe the user hits a specific page at precisely the same time it is getting updated.

The way you have worded things makes it sound as if you are generating to the server, not publishing to it. Generate clears the folder specified in the first page of the wizard and that should be a local folder. In the last page of the wizard you specify where you are going to publish. Publishing never deletes a file. It replaces the files that already exist but any that are no longer required get left there. Also in the wizard you can elect to just update what has changed or replace all. As stated, the latter does not empty the folders and that is what makes me think you are generating to the server, not publishing.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

[tom_bradley]

*facepalm*

That makes much more sense! Sadly it doesn't quite seem to be working yet, I have selected a local folder for the "Output Folder" then on the next screen I added the path to the server  and clicked finish, unfrotunatly it only published to the localfolder, nothing in the output mentioned anything going on to the server.

I noticed with I was entering the server details it mentioned "RoboHelp Server" in the conenction protocols, a quick Google brings up the RoboHelp server package. I do not have that (I don't really want it!) I just want to be able to publish to a folder in our already existing folder. Is this a problem?

[RoboColum_n_ · Accepted solution]

What is your default single source layout? Look in your Single Source Layouts pod and it is displayed there. It sounds like it is set to WebHelp Pro which is the layout required to generate output required by the RH Server application and publish to a dedicated server. If all you want to do is generate WebHelp output to a server you should use the Webhelp SSL. You can read more about this here.

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Read the RoboColum(n) for a tips,  tricks and musings on the Technical Communication Suite products.

[Peter Grainge]

Use the SSL pod rather than Generate Primary Layout. In the last page of the wizard you set up how you publish to the server, your existing server as you don't need RH Server.

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See www.grainge.org for RoboHelp and Authoring tips

[tom_bradley]

Thank you very much, works fine now!