Linking Landing page with no skin to Help topics with skin

[BPell]

I've tried to find answers on my own, but I'm coming up empty and I hope someone can help me.

I'm trying to create an HTML5 project that behaves as follows:

• Landing page 1, on which the user clicks one of four images that represents the application they want help with.
• Landing page 2 opens, on which the user clicks one of two images that represents their role (User or Administrator) while using the app.
• Help file (one of eight) specific to the selected application and role opens.

This flowchart might do a better job of explaining what I'm trying to accomplish:

LandingPgs.png

I DON'T want a skin on either of the landing pages, just an H1 and the images.
I DO want a skin on the Help files (all eight can have the same skin) - I want side nav TOC

The Landing pages look and work fine. I've created image maps/links on Landing page 1 to open one of four Landing page 2s, and I've done the same on Landing page 2 to open one of eight help files (App A-User, App A-Admin, App B-User, App B-Admin, etc.), but the help files are inheriting the "Skin: (none)" selection I made in the Landing pages' target.

So, the problem I'm having is figuring out how to get from Landing page 2 with no skin to the Help file with skin/side nav. Does anyone know how to do this? Also, what is the best way to structure the project? Can it all be in one project or do I need separate projects?

I'd really appreciate the help!

[devjoe]

All of the landing page stuff should go in one project which uses skinless HTML5 output, or maybe Clean XHTML.

The 8 links from the second landing pages that go to the actual help will be external links - you'll specify the link just like you were linking to an external web site. Alternatively, you can make it a relative link, using one or more ../ to go up out of the help system and into the other help systems. But in this case, you'll have to type out the paths yourself and Flare will complain the links go outside the project - they will work, though, if you get them right. This makes less work if you move your site around, assuming you keep all the help outputs beside one another, and is more robust if there are alternate ways users can reach the site. The other advantage to this is if you have a local staging folder where all the projects go before going onto the web server, arranged in the same way they will go on the server, then using relative links will make the landing page links work using the other locally staged files.

You might, for instance, have them in folders beside one another. For example, the landing pages might be in yoursite.com/help/home/ and one of the product helps you are linking to might be in yoursite.com/help/producta_user/
You'll need enough ../ to get up to yoursite.com/help/ and then you can add the rest of the path into the other project.

Then you'll have 8 help systems for your 8 different scenarios. These could be 8 targets from one project, or 4 each from two projects, or 2 each from 4 projects, or 8 separate projects, depending on how similar the content is.

[BPell]

The 8 links from the second landing pages that go to the actual help will be external links - you'll specify the link just like you were linking to an external web site.

I tried that, but the startup topic opens without the skin, so it appears to be inheriting from the landing page project.

I'll try the relative links.

Thanks so much for your response!

[BPell]

This is embarassing, but in case my admission might help someone else, here goes...

My external links opened the topic I wanted, but without the skin I expected because I linked to the topics in the regular content folder. I corrected the links to point to the topics in the output content folder.

Works fine now. Thanks again devjoe!

[janeanderson]

I am doing the exact same thing, one project with a parent landing page that has no skin that links to child pages in another project with a skin.
My question is how to add a link from the logo in the child page skin back to the parent landing page? I only seem to be able to add a Logo URL to a child page.

Any help would be fantastic! Thanks.

[scap]

I am doing the exact same thing, one project with a parent landing page that has no skin that links to child pages in another project with a skin.
My question is how to add a link from the logo in the child page skin back to the parent landing page? I only seem to be able to add a Logo URL to a child page.

Any help would be fantastic! Thanks.

Logos and their URL are usually added in the skin. Have you checked each skin?