A couple years ago we built a website using Flare 10 and put it online.
The computer which it was built on was destroyed while the output remained useable online.
Now we have version 12 and acces to the output online, but not the source material and we're trying to rebuild the site.
I've made a project where i imported the large number of html files and I've made a project where i just copy+pasted the content directly into the folders.
Both are severely lacking, mostly because any action inside Flare 12 takes minutes while the machines runs fine.
for example cpoy pasting results in a supposedly wrong format, while the import makes a bit of a mess in the content explorer
Seeing as how both projects recovered different parts of the output and i haven't been able to do much with the projects:
- what would be the best adviseable (and quick) way to recover said site as complete as possible
- what could cause the slow running of flare
- are there any things/pitfalls i should consider?
Thanks in Advance
Recovering an old website
Re: Recovering an old website
I don't think there is an easy or quick solution to reverse engineer the output, it will be a very time-consuming job.
I'd say there are two approaches:
- Copy/paste the raw text from the browser to the Flare editor, then reformat everything from scratch.
- Clean up the output files and then import them into a Flare project.
You'd probably think it should be easier to clean up the files and import them into a Flare project, however this will be difficult and not for beginners.
The problem is that the topics in the built output can be very different to the source topics, and you'll need to know what all these differences are, and then fix them.
For example:
- Any 'MadCap' tags in the source code are modified in output, so must be removed or re-inserted; e.g. drop-downs, togglers, cross-references, glossary or popup links, proxies, breadcrumbs, mini-TOCs, etc.
- You'll need to remove numerous links to the generated stylesheets and scripts.
- The HTML structure of the output topic can be quite different, and you may need to remove several tags and classes (especially in HTML5 outputs).
- The source topics must be XHTML, so you may need to edit the output HTML to make it valid XHTML.
- You'll have to recreate any conditions, snippets or variables.
It might be worth asking MadCap support for advice, just in case they've helped others in this situation.
I'd say there are two approaches:
- Copy/paste the raw text from the browser to the Flare editor, then reformat everything from scratch.
- Clean up the output files and then import them into a Flare project.
You'd probably think it should be easier to clean up the files and import them into a Flare project, however this will be difficult and not for beginners.
The problem is that the topics in the built output can be very different to the source topics, and you'll need to know what all these differences are, and then fix them.
For example:
- Any 'MadCap' tags in the source code are modified in output, so must be removed or re-inserted; e.g. drop-downs, togglers, cross-references, glossary or popup links, proxies, breadcrumbs, mini-TOCs, etc.
- You'll need to remove numerous links to the generated stylesheets and scripts.
- The HTML structure of the output topic can be quite different, and you may need to remove several tags and classes (especially in HTML5 outputs).
- The source topics must be XHTML, so you may need to edit the output HTML to make it valid XHTML.
- You'll have to recreate any conditions, snippets or variables.
It might be worth asking MadCap support for advice, just in case they've helped others in this situation.
Re: Recovering an old website
Thanks for your input. It helped a great deal in deciding the best course of action.
I also contacted support like you suggested and in case it can help anyone with a similar problem, here is their reply:
Thank you for contacting MadCap technical support.
I would generally not recommend grabbing generating output and adding it to a new Flare project. This is because, there are additional styles and JavaScript that are added at compile time.
• There is generally no way to import the files unless you were to cleanup all the content before bringing them in, this may take as long as copying and pasting. I would personally recommend using the copy and paste method.
• The reason Flare may be running slow may have to do with a few different things
1. Is your project bound to source control?
2. Does this slow down occur in a new project?
3. Is your project bound o source control?
4. What is the size of your project?
• The pitfalls you should consider are accidentally adding in the compiled elements into your project and breaking. It does look like you have anticipated most of these however.
• I would also consider you using a source control provider in the future so that you can avoid this sort of an issue just in encase the machine does break down. These would include SVN, TFS, Git, and Perforce. They do integrate with Flare.
Please let me know if you have any further questions regarding this issue.
In addition I've discovered the runspeed is almost entirely due to the location of the files I'm working on: on a networked server. Once I put them on the local machine I'm working on (which ideally I wouldn't, for security, backup and/or redundancy reasons) everything worked fine.
I also contacted support like you suggested and in case it can help anyone with a similar problem, here is their reply:
Thank you for contacting MadCap technical support.
I would generally not recommend grabbing generating output and adding it to a new Flare project. This is because, there are additional styles and JavaScript that are added at compile time.
• There is generally no way to import the files unless you were to cleanup all the content before bringing them in, this may take as long as copying and pasting. I would personally recommend using the copy and paste method.
• The reason Flare may be running slow may have to do with a few different things
1. Is your project bound to source control?
2. Does this slow down occur in a new project?
3. Is your project bound o source control?
4. What is the size of your project?
• The pitfalls you should consider are accidentally adding in the compiled elements into your project and breaking. It does look like you have anticipated most of these however.
• I would also consider you using a source control provider in the future so that you can avoid this sort of an issue just in encase the machine does break down. These would include SVN, TFS, Git, and Perforce. They do integrate with Flare.
Please let me know if you have any further questions regarding this issue.
In addition I've discovered the runspeed is almost entirely due to the location of the files I'm working on: on a networked server. Once I put them on the local machine I'm working on (which ideally I wouldn't, for security, backup and/or redundancy reasons) everything worked fine.