Minimum files to upload after a single topic change

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Mark Wilsdorf
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Minimum files to upload after a single topic change

Unread post by Mark Wilsdorf »

I maintain a Web site with H&M. Sometimes I need to make only a minor change to one or a couple pages, publish WebHelp locally, then refresh the copy on the site via FTP.

My question: supposing I don't care about having the changed page(s) included in the site's index, what are the minimum files I would have to upload to get the change reflected in the site? Just the main HTML file and its corresponding /jstopics/*.js file?

(Sorry if this isn't specifically a PP topic, but I wondered if output might be affected in this regard by using a PP skin.)
Tobias Escher
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Re: Minimum files to upload after a single topic change

Unread post by Tobias Escher »

I'm wondering the same.
I have found that I always need to re-upload everything, otherwise there are wrong pages, etc...
There seem to be multiple cache files, etc.
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Tim Green
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Re: Minimum files to upload after a single topic change

Unread post by Tim Green »

As so often, the answer here is "it depends". Here are some basic rules of thumb:
  • If you change or update the skin you are using, it's best to upload everything.
  • If you add new topics or make changes in the TOC, it's best to upload everything.
  • If you update Help+Manual itself, it's best to upload everything.
  • If you only make changes in individual topics and nowhere else, then you may be able to get away with uploading the corresponding HTML and jstopics files and all the zoom search files (the search index changes whenever you change anything).
The bottom line is, if you have a fast upstream, it's always easiest and most reliable to upload everything. There are no "cache" files as such, but there is a lot of interrelation. :?
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Tim Frost
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Re: Minimum files to upload after a single topic change

Unread post by Tim Frost »

I use the invaluable Beyond Compare utility from scootersoftware.com to upload to our website, configured to display only "orphans and newer" files on my machine, compared against the (FTP) files on the website, with the folder structure maintained. I think it would be harder to replicate this safely if I did FTP uploads manually.

To make it work, I need to keep to the following simple rules.

1. Make no new help changes between building the help and uploading. Our web server sets the file time to the time of upload.

2. Make sure that H&M is set to transfer the timestamp of the source to the destination. This has to be done in the PP skin as well as in the main project.

3. In our case, one topic shows a version number from a variable held in a file, which gets updated on each build: so in our Finalbuilder project I 'touch' the timestamp of the XML file for this topic (which rarely needs editing otherwise) before the help build, to ensure that its HTML file gets a new timestamp.

4. Set Beyond Compare to ignore the file sizes: they are always different because the upload changes the end-of-line sequences.

After this it is only necessary to open the Beyond Compare saved task and copy everything visible as unmatched or newer from the left to the right, which usually takes under a minute, most of which is uploading new index files. Never had a problem yet. I only ever need to re-upload everything after an H&M upgrade, or if I make a style change or other change which is clearly going to affect all topics. Beyond Compare is very affordable and has a demo version available.
Mark Wilsdorf
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Re: Minimum files to upload after a single topic change

Unread post by Mark Wilsdorf »

Tim & Tim,

Thanks to you both.
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