Help instances

A help instance is a set of content files (topics) organized into a hierarchical structure (table of contents) in a tree file with a unique ID. A help instance is what you build into a single help website.

By default, a typical Writerside documentation project contains one help instance. Add more help instances if you need to produce multiple help outputs, for example, to document several products or editions of a product, produce documentation for different audiences, types of users, or output formats. You can reuse any content in your documentation project across help instances. For more information, see Single sourcing and content reuse.

Add help instance

In the Writerside tool window , right-click the current help instance name, select New Instance, and click New.
If you have existing documentation authored in Markdown, click From Local Markdown Files to import them as a new help instance.
Specify a help instance name which will be the main title. If necessary, modify the proposed instance ID.
Make sure that the ID of every instance is unique and descriptive. It will be used as the name of the .tree file and you will use this ID to filter reusable content.
If necessary, specify a web path and version for the current help instance. The web path is used during publication to upload the help website to the proper location. The version will be displayed next to the main help title.
If you do not want your content indexed by search engines, clear the Allow search engine indexing checkbox.
Click OK.

As a result, Writerside will create a new tree file (web.tree or whatever ID you specified) and register it in writerside.cfg. You will see the new help instance in the Writerside tool window .

Change help instance icon color

To clearly distinguish help instances from each other in the Writerside tool window , you may want to assign different color icons.

Right-click a help instance, select Change Color and select the color that you want.

Rename help instance

In the Writerside tool window , right-click a help instance and select Edit.
Specify a new name for the help instance name and click OK.

Do not change the ID if it is not necessary. If you do change the ID, Writerside will find all references to this help instance ID and suggest running the Rename refactoring to properly update all usages. It will also rename the .tree file. However, it will not update any of your publication scripts, so make sure you configure them correctly with the new help instance ID.

Last modified: 19 October 2023