Hosting Issues with WebHelp Plus

[Andries]

Hi to all,

I have a few tasks for evaluating Flare before we can commit.
One is to host it properly, this seems to be an interesting task.
I'm using the evaluation version, so I hope it's not the reason for all my troubles, but once I build the target and normally brows the help site everything works fine, I can see topics and goto the different pages in IE and firefox.
The problem comes in when hosting it on IIS, ither on my Win 7 and even on our Win 2008 server, then I can't see any TOCs and loading hangs on page Index in both IE and firefox.
I tried the fixes and installation guides on the madcap KB and posts on the Forums, but with no success.
I do get a JS error in IE:
Webpage error details

User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; Media Center PC 6.0; FDM; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.2; OfficeLiveConnector.1.4; OfficeLivePatch.1.3; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E; AskTbPTV/5.8.0.12304)
Timestamp: Thu, 9 Sep 2010 05:55:53 UTC


Message: Object required
Line: 5046
Char: 1
Code: 0
URI: http://localhost/HorizonHelp/Content/Sk ... dCapAll.js

Hope someone can help.
Kind regards

[Bahbert]

I'm surprised no one has asked this yet, but have you read the "FAQs—WebHelp Plus" help file? It provides a number of answers to issues that come up when setting up an Webhelp Plus output.

Just search MadCap Flare's help file for "Webhelp Plus"; the FAQ should be the first result listed.

[kashby]

I had something similar when setting up a webhelp plus output on a Win7 laptop. I went through the configuration document in the Flare help system, but something was missing. I called tech support and they were stumped. Fortunately, after poking around for a bit, the support rep spotted the issue. Static Content was not enabled. As soon as we turned on this option, the system lit up like a Christmas tree and it all worked fine. I am in the process of doing a little more testing to verify, but I'd start there if I were you.

• 1. Click Start > Control Panel > Programs > Programs and Features > Turn Windows features on or off.

• 2. Expand Internet Information Services > World Wide Web Services > Common HTTP Features.

• 3. Click Static Content.

• 4. Click OK.

There's always a chance that there's something more, but every little bit helps.

[RamonS]

Also take a look at the Feedback Service that MadCap offers. They will do the hosting for you so that you do not have to deal with the moronic configuration of IIS.