MadCap Software Forums

We have several documentation projects on Central, and also a "portal" project that's basically a landing page with links to the documentation project home pages. We have a Host Mapped Domain, so that the URLs for topics begin with http://docs.myCompany.com, instead of the standard mcoutput domain. We set a Vanity URL for the portal target, so its URL is https://docs.myCompany.com/portal/default.htm

We also set Vanity URLs for each target in the doc projects. So, altogether, a topic URL looks like https://docs.myCompany.com/targetVanity ... c-name.htm. Works great!

What doesn't work is when someone browses the root URL - https://docs.myCompany.com. That goes to Central and returns a stock MadCap 404 - Page Not Found page. Is there a way to specify a "default project" on Central so visitors don't get that and are sent to the portal instead? Seems like a pretty basic requirement, yet I can't find an way to do it. Anyone? Thanks.

Update 8/23/2019: I also pursued this with MadCap Support. They were able to tell me that a) this is a current issue within Central, and cannot be remedied with a configurable setting; and b) they will be setting up a redirect on the Central web server for us that provides a temporary solution.

This is still an issue.

Interestingly, whilst until recently if you went to https://help.madcapsoftware.com/ you got an error, but this now redirects to https://help.madcapsoftware.com/flare20 ... n/Home.htm.

Why this can't be an option for us, I dunno!

RStreets wrote:This is still an issue.

Interestingly, whilst until recently if you went to https://help.madcapsoftware.com/ you got an error, but this now redirects to https://help.madcapsoftware.com/flare20 ... n/Home.htm.

Why this can't be an option for us, I dunno!

Flare's help is not stored on Central, the redirect is done by our webservers where its hosted.
This is still a current issue with Central and we are not aware of any making any changes to support this in the past.

And I don't suppose there's any indication if/when this will be fixed. Yet again today, I have an email in my inbox from a colleague in a customer support role, struggling to remember the URL to our documentation portal AND THEN struggling because it's case sensitive.

Central is great and solved several problems for me--except for the glitches like this that make the published output look unprofessional which my users are going to perceive as a failing on my organisation's part as they don't, and shouldn't have to, know about what tools are used to create the content.

Hello,

In Central you can select one of your sites as Default Site in your host mapped domain. Edit your domain "docs.YourCompany.com" on the URLs page and select Default Site.

/Michael