Premium Skin Search referencing deleted topics

[Matt Kendall]

Hi Tim

My PP Skin Search function is finding results from topics which I have deleted. They have been removed from the Project files, my web server and the HTML folder, yet the results still show them.

Is there any way I can get rid of them from the results?

Thanks.

[Tim Green]

Hi Matt,

This doesn't have anything to do with the skin. When you use WebHelp the search index is generated by scanning the HTML files in your output folder, because the search needs to work on the HTML files. When you delete topics in your project any old HTML files generated from previous publish operations in your output folder are not automatically deleted. If you don't flush the files from this folder it will also contain the old copy of the deleted topic(s) the last time you published, and they will then also be included in the search index.

The quickest way to achieve this is to select the option to delete all the files in the output folder in the Publish dialog. Alternatively you can just choose a different empty folder.

You should also regularly flush the files in the WebHelp folder on your web server when you update your project. Old topic files there won't show up in the search function in Help & Manual because the index has been updated (if you flushed your local output folder), but they will continue to show up in Google and other search engines if the files still exist on the server. (If they have already been indexed they will also continue to show up in search engines for a while anyway, even if you have deleted them, because it takes a while for them to get updated.)

Similarly, when you are generating CHM files you should normally leave the Publish dialog option to delete temporary files on. Only turn it off for analysis purposes when you want to examine the CHM source files generated for some special reason.

[Matt Kendall]

Go it. Thanks for the swift reply Sensei.