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A
Anonymous
April 25, 2012
Question

Making a duplicate copy of a RoboHelp WebHelp Pro project in RH9

  • April 25, 2012
  • 1 reply
  • 1172 views

Greetings forum friends,

I wanted to seek your suggestions for a procedure for creating a new project from an existing project.

The use case here is to create the help system for your recently updated project, which requires a new help project.

Here is the general process I am considering:

1. Copy original Project Files to a new location on the local file system

2. Open the project from the new location - either browse to project file using Windows Explorer, or open it from RH9.

3. Rename the project folder and File > Rename Project

4. Rename the Project Title in the Project Settings

5. Update Help topics with the new version.

6. Publish the project and confirm the availability in the RH Server Admin page

Does this process seem agreeable? Any suggestions?

The reason I ask about this is that we have begun seeing an odd issue where some of our projects are displaying twice in the RH9 Server Admin page.

We have removed the references from Admin and the webserver, and have republished but we see the same results.

Any suggestions are most welcome.

Thanks,

Eric

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    RoboColum_n_
    RoboColum_n_
    Legend
    April 25, 2012

    Hi Eric. Your procedure is good except for the fact that you'll not be able to renam the local file folder if you have the project open. So you'll have to do the first part of step 3 before step 2.  The only other question I have is that it sounds like you are publishing to the same area on the RH Server. Is that correct? It would be better to have a separate area for each iteration.

    A
    Anonymous
    April 25, 2012

    Thanks so much for the prompt response.

    I am intrigued by your response to the 2nd question. I think you may be on to something. Would you mind elaborating on that further?

    I am not entirely sure how to confirm, so I will do my best to give info below...

    Is this path setup in the WebHelp Pro Properties on the 3rd screen in the SERVERS configuration?

    In the EDIT DESTINATION dialog box, the HELP AREA value is named GENERAL. Is this where that path is established?

    Practically speaking, all of our help projects reside in this folder on the webserver that hosts the webhelp:

    C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe RoboHelp Server 8\robo\server\general\projects

    (this is the path where the files are created when we complete the PUBLISH process in RH).

    Note: We are using RH9 clients and RH 8 webserver.

    RoboColum_n_
    RoboColum_n_
    Legend
    April 25, 2012

    Hi Eric.

    The "General" area is the default location for all WebHelp Pro project output. This area has certain defaults to it that are designed to allow someone to install RHServer and use it out of the box. However in the real world you may find that this area on its own does not meet your requirements.

    Think of each area on the RHServer as a directory into which you publish your output. If you have ProjectA and ProjectB, you can publish their output to the same area without issue. However if you have two versions of ProjectA, there are potential pitfalls. Now I don't know what you have done with the new version of your project but if you haven't carried out your duplication correctly and published the output to the same area, you could have two different versions of the output in the same location.

    Personally I always publish each version to its own distinct RHServer area that you can setup in the Web Administrator. This is set in the Edit Destination dialog as you describe. The only thing to consider here is that the path to the help would differ to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe RoboHelp Server 8\robo\server\<area>\projects where <area> is the area name. You may want to read the RH Server Reviewers Guide which expalins more about this area.

    This keeps things much simpler and neater. This works for us also as each area contains a single help file made up of over 15 merged RoboHelp projects. If I was to publish multiple version of each version to the same area, I'd get VERY confused VERY quickly! This maybe taking things a little too far for you but we also subdivide our output into different RHServer contexts which are setup in the Configuration Manager. For example we have contexts for ProductA Versions 1-10, ProductA Versions 11-20, ProductA Versions 21-30, ProductB Versions 1-10, ProductB Versions 11-20, etc.

    Hope this helps.

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