Phantom Topics - in Project Files > Topic Files but not in the project

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Dave Gehman
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Phantom Topics - in Project Files > Topic Files but not in the project

Unread post by Dave Gehman »

We have a few phantom topics in our Webhelp, maybe 5 or 6.

These do not appear in the online navigation or in the TOC. But they do magically emerge when a user searches on a keyword that is in them, then clicks on the search hit that links to the phantom topic.

They do exist in the Project Files > Topic Files, which appears to be duplications of project topics, maybe for internal tracking.

They are probably the result of some operator error on our part while deleting topics from the primary project. (They are all topics that we meant to remove -- completely remove.)

I see a small checkbox at the bottom of the Delete selected entry? dialog : "[x] Also delete topic files." If we mistakenly un-checked this option while deleting a topic, would the result be the persistence of the topic in this Project > Topic Files parallel universe?
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Tim Green
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Re: Phantom Topics - in Project Files > Topic Files but not in the project

Unread post by Tim Green »

I see a small checkbox at the bottom of the Delete selected entry? dialog : "[x] Also delete topic files." If we mistakenly un-checked this option while deleting a topic, would the result be the persistence of the topic in this Project > Topic Files parallel universe?
Yes, because then you would just delete the TOC entry, which is only a link pointing to the topic file. The file would still be exported, because it would be assumed you want to display it with hyperlinks, for example. You can check for that easily by looking directly in Project Files > Topic Files, which is the only place where topics exist.

Another possibility is that you published to a folder that was not empty. The search index is generated from the published HTML files, and if old topics from previous publishes are still there they will be included in the search, and will also get uploaded to your web server. It's best to always choose the option to delete the contents of the output folder before publishing. Similarly, you should also regularly delete everything in the web server folder, because old files there will continue to get indexed by Google and other search machines.

The most efficient way to update on your web server is to create an additional folder on the same level as your actual folder. Upload to that and test there. If everything is OK, change the name of the current actual folder to something else and the name of the new folder to that of the regular folder. Then delete the old folder. That has the added advantage that your help will only be offline for a few seconds, if you do it efficiently. 8)
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Dave Gehman
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Re: Phantom Topics - in Project Files > Topic Files but not in the project

Unread post by Dave Gehman »

Thanks. These phantoms -- can we simply delete them from the Topic Files (right click, Delete Entry)?

They contain nothing that might be needed by another topic.

We have a slight twist on the uploading -- upload to an Upload Here folder, move the current live site to an Old folder, then move from Upload Here to the actual, live folder. For the most part, we've tested locally during the time that the Webhelp is available locally right after compiling.
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Tim Green
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Re: Phantom Topics - in Project Files > Topic Files but not in the project

Unread post by Tim Green »

Dave Gehman wrote: Wed Jun 09, 2021 2:59 pm Thanks. These phantoms -- can we simply delete them from the Topic Files (right click, Delete Entry)?
Yes, that's fine, provided you do it from within Help+Manual and are sure you don't need the topics.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
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