Hello Flare community,
Long time lurker, first time poster.
My workplace has recently moved to Flare from a very, very old version of DreamWeaver and I need some advice as I haven't found these answers in either the documentation, or the forums.
1) Can you publish a single page in Flare, or must the whole project be published? We have over 7000 files in several TOCs and if something has to go out to a reviewer, is the only way to do it to spend 10 - 15 minutes publishing the whole project to a PDF or Word doc?
2) Could authors who work in a multi-author environment using Subversion pipe up and let me know how they run their publication cycles? I'm looking for some guidance as to how others do it so I can create a process for us. We publish changes weekly, and I know there will be quite the process change from what we currently do.
Thanks in advance for your time and answers.
Single page, and multi-author publishing advice needed
Re: Single page, and multi-author publishing advice needed
1) You can publish a single topic in Flare, though the topic may span multiple pages. This is done by creating a new TOC, adding just that topic to it, then building a target with that TOC selected.
2) What is your current process like?
2) What is your current process like?
Re: Single page, and multi-author publishing advice needed
Thanks for the response!
1) Doesn't that process create additional overhead? You edit an existing page, then have to create a new TOC with the topic/topics in it. We'd each then have hundreds of ToCs that would require deletion after the content is approved. I can see that causing a problem if someone deletes the wrong one.
2) We currently publish HTML pages from DreamWeaver directly to a test server. As soon as we click "Save", the content changes are visible on the test server site. This is fantastic for sending pages to reviewers. At the end of each week, all authors put their changed pages into a text file and one of us uses a batch file to move the individual pages from the test server to the live server. As DW keeps all the page navigation/look & feel on the page, there's no build process like in Flare.
1) Doesn't that process create additional overhead? You edit an existing page, then have to create a new TOC with the topic/topics in it. We'd each then have hundreds of ToCs that would require deletion after the content is approved. I can see that causing a problem if someone deletes the wrong one.
2) We currently publish HTML pages from DreamWeaver directly to a test server. As soon as we click "Save", the content changes are visible on the test server site. This is fantastic for sending pages to reviewers. At the end of each week, all authors put their changed pages into a text file and one of us uses a batch file to move the individual pages from the test server to the live server. As DW keeps all the page navigation/look & feel on the page, there's no build process like in Flare.
Re: Single page, and multi-author publishing advice needed
Hopefully this doesn't get posted along with my previous reply.awells12 wrote:1) You can publish a single topic in Flare, though the topic may span multiple pages. This is done by creating a new TOC, adding just that topic to it, then building a target with that TOC selected.
2) What is your current process like?
1) Doesn't that create a lot of extra overhead? Write/edit the existing pages, then create a new TOC for them to generate the build? In the end, one would have possibly dozens of extra ToCs kicking around requiring deletion.
2) Because DW files contain all the page HMTL, we publish them directly to a test server. Click "Ctrl + S" and the page is live on the test server. Each week, writers put the names of their changed pages into a text file and a batch file is used to move the files from the test server to the production server.
Because Flare + Subversion allows multiple authors on the same page, I assume we'd have to all upload to Subversion by a specific point in the week, then the person doing the weekly build would need to download the newest copy, generate the build and then post it to the production server. If that is a correct assumption, does one download the newest copy into a separate folder than the local where they are still working on pages?
Re: Single page, and multi-author publishing advice needed
1) What we do is have just one "review" TOC for each author to use that is linked to it's own "review" target. When a topic(s) requires review, we just delete whatever old links are currently in the TOC and add what we need reviewed. The target will build whatever is in that TOC so you don't need to create a new TOC each time.Frog24 wrote:Hopefully this doesn't get posted along with my previous reply.awells12 wrote:1) You can publish a single topic in Flare, though the topic may span multiple pages. This is done by creating a new TOC, adding just that topic to it, then building a target with that TOC selected.
2) What is your current process like?
1) Doesn't that create a lot of extra overhead? Write/edit the existing pages, then create a new TOC for them to generate the build? In the end, one would have possibly dozens of extra ToCs kicking around requiring deletion.
2) Because DW files contain all the page HMTL, we publish them directly to a test server. Click "Ctrl + S" and the page is live on the test server. Each week, writers put the names of their changed pages into a text file and a batch file is used to move the files from the test server to the production server.
Because Flare + Subversion allows multiple authors on the same page, I assume we'd have to all upload to Subversion by a specific point in the week, then the person doing the weekly build would need to download the newest copy, generate the build and then post it to the production server. If that is a correct assumption, does one download the newest copy into a separate folder than the local where they are still working on pages?
2) You are correct in assuming all authors will need to commit their changes to Subversion before publishing. When the person doing the build gets the latest version of the project, it overwrites their local copy. As long as there are no outstanding changes, the local copy should match the server copy and you can create a build from your local copy. Does that make sense?
You should be able to publish directly to the test server from Flare through the use of publishing destinations. These are files that are associated with a target that tell the target where to publish to.
Hope this helps.
Re: Single page, and multi-author publishing advice needed
I know I'm late to this, but our team came up with something quite simple for this.
- From the Preview button at the top of the topic, select a PDF-based target (we don't use PDF here, so we set one up for this).
- The PDF preview displays the print button on mouse over. Use that to print to PDF and save wherever.
- Then we send the PDFs out for review.
It might sound like a lot, but it's just a couple more steps beyond a standard "Save as" process, and way easier to us than using TOCs. We even gussied up the PDF target with headers and footers announcing that it's a review copy. Have fun! We found this much easier.
- From the Preview button at the top of the topic, select a PDF-based target (we don't use PDF here, so we set one up for this).
- The PDF preview displays the print button on mouse over. Use that to print to PDF and save wherever.
- Then we send the PDFs out for review.
It might sound like a lot, but it's just a couple more steps beyond a standard "Save as" process, and way easier to us than using TOCs. We even gussied up the PDF target with headers and footers announcing that it's a review copy. Have fun! We found this much easier.