MadCap Software Forums

We are developing an HTML5 knowledge base/website in Flare and need to link to hundreds of PDFs. I need suggestions on where to store the PDFs so they are accessible when the website is published.

I've tried both Sharepoint and a network folder, but the PDFs aren't accessible from the published public website because they are locked behind a firewall.

If I create a destination folder within the parent HTML5 project to store hundreds of PDFs (generated from Flare child projects), will this overwhelm Flare or Central?

Does anyone have experience with this?

Thanks!
Rebecca

Why can't you link to the PDFs that are on your public website?
That's what I do.

I'm not sure why someone would set up your firewall to block your own website, but if it does then change your firewall settings.

The HTML5 KB/website is in development and isn't published yet. I'm trying to find the best place to store hundreds of PDFs so they can be accessed by the site.

If I store hundreds of PDFs in the project folder in Flare, will that bloat the project or have any size limitation errors when I try to publish it in Central?

Are the pdfs going to change regularly and are they maintained by you or some other business area?

If they are largely static, I think I would create a separate folder and subfolders on the webserver and store them there, then link to that folder using a standard url (htttps://mysite.com/pdfs/category/pdfname.pdf). That way you don't have to publish unchanged files (sometimes the method of determining changed files does not get it right and you end up republishing everything - I had this happen in a multi-author environment.)

If they are maintained by other groups I would probably do the same thing and give those groups the ability to publish their files to that folder (using ftp or whatever method suits your organisation). It can be tricky chasing other groups for updated files and being responsible for publishing their files can be problematic sometimes. However, this is largely dependent on your organisation, and just a personal preference.

I can't comment on how Flare will handle a large number of pdfs as I haven't worked with that scenario. My entirely UNscientific observation in other tools is that large numbers of files in a single directory can cause slowness. But whatever method you use I would recommend determining a grouping/categorisation method and creating folders of related pdfs, as it should make finding the file you want easier than browsing through a long list.