Publishing > Publishing Your Projects

Before actually distributing your files there are a few things you should check because they are quite easy to forget:

Title and copyright information:

Have you set the project title, author and copyright information? Settings Here

Help window titles:

Have you set the correct titles for your help window title bars? Settings Here

Language settings:

Have you set the correct language settings for the language of your project? This is particularly important if you are using languages requiring special character sets or Unicode. See International languages setup for details.

Special requirements for ePub eBooks

The ePub eBook format is outstanding for universal distribution across many platforms and devices but precisely because of this it is also more restrictive than some other formats. It is designed to be more like a book than an electronic document and it thus has some special requirements and restrictions.

Before publishing to ePub first visit the Adobe Digital Editions download page and install the Digital Editions eBook reader. This is essential because without it you will not be able to view your ePub eBooks after you have created them.

You will also need to check whether everything in your project is compatible with ePub. Please also study the information on ePub eBooks in the Configuring Your Output and Publishing Formats and Configuration Settings chapters before proceeding.

Names of modular projects:

When you are using runtime merging for HLP and CHM files the project filenames and the output filenames of the HLP or CHM files must be identical. The references between the child and the master help files are based on the filenames and if project and output filename don't match the references will be invalid.

If you want to change the name of the output file in the Publish dialog you should also change the name of the entire project to match, using Save As... in the Application menu.

Dead links caused by excluded topics

You may have dead links in your project if you have excluded topics from your output without taking steps to deal with links to the topics that are not present in your output. You can configure Help & Manual to deal with these dead links automatically in two different ways, see Program Options - Compilers for details.

These automatic options are useful for a quick fix but it is generally better to use conditional text tags to exclude the links and replace them with alternative text when necessary. See Preventing dead links for detailed instructions.

Linked snippets:

Are you using linked snippets (snippets linked to topic files or external files)? If the source files are in your current project you need to make sure that they will not be included in your output, otherwise they will be exported too in electronic help formats and the user will be able to find them with Search.

Select the tab of the each source topic and deselect all the options in Builds which include this topic. See Re-using content with snippets for details.

Notes and other information you want to exclude:

Does your project contain any author's notes and other "production information" that users shouldn't see? It's a good idea to use Comments & Bookmarks feature for information like this to ensure that it isn't included in the output. You can also exclude information from your output with Conditional Text.