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Daedalus321
Daedalus321
Known Participant
February 15, 2017
Answered

Incrementally Add Child Projects to existing Master Project

  • February 15, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 1344 views

Hi all,

Question:  How can I incrementally add child projects to a master project without having to republish the master project and each and every child project each time?

(I'm concerned with steps #4 and #5 in my list below).

I should add that my master project will be essentially infinite, so the number of child projects will eventually number into the dozens or hundreds. I'm outputting to merged responsive HTML5.

Thanks!

Mark

Let's say I have:

A)  A Master Project published to a server

B)  Child Project 01 through Child Project 05 have merged project placeholders in the TOC of the Master Project

C)  Each of Child Project 01 through Child Project 05 is published into their respective mergedProject folders in the output files of the Master Project.

Example:

Master Project (published)

Child 1 (published)

Child 2 (published)

Child 3 (published)

Child 4 (published)

Child 5 (published)

Now let's say that later, I want to add Child 6, Child 7, and Child 8 to the Master Project.

As I understand it, I would have to:

1)  Create Child 6, Child 7, and Child 8 projects.

2)  Open the Master Project

3)  Add Child 6, Child 7, and Child 8 placeholders into the Master Project TOC as merged projects

4)  Republish the Master Project

5)  Republish Child Projects 1 through 5 into their respective mergedProject folders

6)  Publish Child Projects 6 though 8 into their respective mergedProject folders

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Germanedge Solutions GmbH

Thanks, Rick.

Certainly, to publish something means to make it public.

My question is really about:

Generating and publishing a Master Project creates empty folders for each child under mergedProjects.

Each child is then generated and published into its respective folder.

Parent

mergedProjects

child 1

child 2

child 3

child 4

child 5

So if I have this master/parent project, and child folders 1-5 are populated/filled, and I then edit the master to add placeholders for new children 6-10 and REPUBLISH the master project, will the folders for child 1-5 now once again be empty?


Hi,

once you have created your master project and filled the already existing child folders, a regeneration of your master with additional children will not delete the content in the existing child folders, but only add the missing folders. Thus, you will only have to create the new child projects. The existing ones only have to be regenerated, if there have been changes to these projects. I'm doing this with HTML5. Notice, that also folders that are no longer part of your master will not be deleted automatically from your output destination. They will just no longer be displayed in the TOC of your master index.

However, just in case: keep a backup!

Best regards

Karin

1 reply

Peter Grainge
Peter Grainge
Community Expert
February 15, 2017

Certainly you must republish the master.

I always did then republish all the child projects but mostly because the

number of projects was small.

I think you will be OK skipping republishing unchanged child projects but

you are using a different output, I was using WebHelp. Check it once to see

if it works.

The merged help pages on my site have a small demo. Download that and test.

What doesn't work is generating/publishing the parent and not doing the

same at least once for each child the parent knows about. Thus don't add

say 10 children to the parent TOC and just generate/publish the first child

only and test. You must generate/publish all ten at least once. Then you

can just update changed children.

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Daedalus321
Daedalus321Author
Known Participant
February 15, 2017

Thanks, Peter.

I see you said "republish" as opposed to regenerate.

(In my original question, I was using terms "publish" and "generate" indiscriminately.)

I'm not quite up yet on generating versus publishing.  I haven't had a chance to use the RoboHelp publishing function yet, as I don't yet have clearance or ability to publish to a gov server. Meanwhile, I am building the file structure of Master Project and Children while awaiting clearance.

If I understand correctly, you are saying I can:

1)  Generate and publish the Master Project with an original five child projects (children 1 through 5)

2)  Publish children 1 through 5 into their respective mergedProject folders

When I later want to add children 6 through 10, I can:

3)  Open up the Master,

4)  Add children 6 through 10 into the TOC,

5)  REPUBLISH (rather than regenerate) the Master Project, and that

6)  When I republish (rather than regenerate) the master, children 1 through 5 will remain intact? (I won't end up with empty folders for children 1 through 5 under mergedProjects?)

(In other words, if nothing in children 1 through 5 had changed, I wouldn't have to republish them.  I could then proceed with publishing children 6 through 10 into their respective mergedProject folders in the now-updated (republished) Master Project output file structure on the server?

_____________________________

Also, I assume that:

1) regenerating means regenerating an entire project/website in its entirety;

2) publishing means you can publish selected topics within a project;

3) publishing (or republishing) selected topics means that those selected topics are first generated, then published;

4) dates in footers will reflect date a file was generated, not published.

If I have a footer in all topics, with a date field, and all of Child 01 was published in 2017, but then selected topics in Child 01 were republished in 2019, will the dates in the footers reflect those differences -- with most topics having a date footer of 2017, while selected topics will have footers with 2019 dates?

Peter Grainge
Peter Grainge
Community Expert
February 15, 2017

I will look in the morning but you need to understand the difference

between generating and publishing. See my site.

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