Deleted Page Appears in Search

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dreesor
Posts: 20
Joined: Tue Jul 20, 2010 9:34 pm
Location: Edmonton, Canada

Deleted Page Appears in Search

Unread post by dreesor »

Hi Tim

I created a page called "definitions," then needed to create a new "definitions page," so renamed the previous version to "definitions - old." After deleting it, when searching for a definition the page "definitions - old," returns a result even though it is deleted.

How would I remove the "old" page from any results?

Thanks.
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Tim Green
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Re: Deleted Page Appears in Search

Unread post by Tim Green »

You don't say what help format you're using but I bet it's WebHelp. You need to select the option to delete all files in the output folder before publishing (in the Publish screen) to prevent this from happening. Otherwise the old topic file is still there and since it has a different name it won't be overwritten, and will also be uploaded to the web server. The search index is generated from the HTML files in the output folder after publishing, so if the old file is still there it will be included in the search index.

Similarly, you should also regularly delete all the files in the web server folder to get rid of old topic files. Even if they are no longer found in the WebHelp search because they are out of the search index they will still be seen and indexed by Google and other search engines. The best policy is to upload to a new empty folder on the same level. Then check it by browsing to that folder, then 1) Change the name of the old folder to something else, 2) Quickly change the name of the new folder to the name of the old folder and 3) Delete the renamed old folder and all its contents. That will also keep the down time for the WebHelp to an absolute minimum. :)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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dreesor
Posts: 20
Joined: Tue Jul 20, 2010 9:34 pm
Location: Edmonton, Canada

Re: Deleted Page Appears in Search

Unread post by dreesor »

Hi Tim

Thanks for the excellent insights both on the project side and server side. I did both as you suggested and all is well.
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