Studio home page in Frameless output does not work propper

[A-Bel]

Hi! We are working on a project with RH 2022 Template Studio and Frameless output.

The homepage of my project opens perfectly when I start my start page index.htm in the output.

However, it does not open in other situations. Instead, the first topic of my project opens. (I have not selected this anywhere, see my settings in the attached screenshots).
This happens when I click on the home button in the breadcrumbs or when the home page opens in the application for which the online help was created.
I tested whether it was due to my settings. To do this, I loaded a completely new Skin Studio and a completely new Frameless output. The result was the same.
What is going wrong?

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Sorry, why do you not have a Default Topic selected?

[A-Bel]

No, none is defined. The png shows this.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Yeah, I can see that - why didn't you select a topic as the landing page?

[A-Bel]

What can I say? Because the studio template suggested: “Yeah, great automatically generated home page. You don't have to do any extra work!”
I understand your answer to be: Always use your own home page! Right?
(Background: This is the first complex frameless project after 20 years of context-sensitive chm output in older RH versions. The rollout date is coming up soon.)

[Peter Grainge · Accepted solution]

You are confusing home page and default topic. You can create your own home page or  you can create your own. Also the home page is optional. If you go to my site, there is no home page, you go straight into the TOC and default topic. A home page typically has tiles instead of books in a TOC.

For either option you still need to set a default topic.

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[A-Bel]

I need to follow up on this. Please let me know if my summary is correct.
I wanted to use the template home page offered by Studio (IVZ in the first level with tiles and a search field). But it only opens via the start page (index.htm).
In other places, the default page opens. Not the template home page. Not even if the default page is not defined.
My interpretation is that the template home page cannot be defined as the default topic. (Because it does not exist as a topic page, or whatever.)
The alternative, creating the home page with tiles myself, is then probably the only option. I don't know how to do that. I'll have to figure that out first.

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Maybe you need to post some screenshots (use the Insert Photos icon in the web interface, not attachments) to show us what you're trying to achieve - because I'm still not sure what you want/expect to see.

[Peter Grainge]

Yes you will only see the Home Page when you open the help using index.htm. Any call to a topic will go direct to that without opening the Home Page.

If you create your own home page, it will work in the same way. A home page is a home page, whether you use Adobe's supplied one or create your own.

That is how home pages are designed to work.

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.

[A-Bel · Accepted solution]

I have my own topic, which I call “home page” here. In any case, the topic is defined as the default topic, my first page. The template home page is disabled.
The tiles have also turned out quite well. If I had known this beforehand, I wouldn't have stuck with the template home page for so long.
Problem solved. Unfortunately, the template home page is not usable for my project.

[Peter Grainge]

By all means call the default topic whatever you like internally but on the forum please use home page for the supplied tile page and default topic otherwise, even if it is your own tiled topic that you think of as a home page.

Using the correct terms helps us help you. 🙂

________________________________________________________

My site www.grainge.org includes many free Authoring and RoboHelp resources that may be of help.