Public URL results in "This project does not contain any pages" message

Hi Yvonne
I've received the public link and I can see that the published xml doesn't contain any pages.
So although you've said the LO is published and I guess you're seeing a public link in properties, the xml used via play rather than preview doesn't contain any pages.
You need to be careful here because if preview of the correct project ID does show you a number of pages then it may be that the xml has become corrupted so publishing isn't working for that project and further edits could be prevented too. This can happen with copy and paste of invalid code or connection issues etc.
This is somewhat guesswork on my part but only in terms of the possible cause not the fact that the published xml is definitely empty of any pages.
One thing you or your colleague could try is create a new empty project and then try importing the pages from the previous project into the new project and making that new project public.
Otherwise someone with server access needs to investigate.
HTH
Ron

Thanks for that Ron, I'll pass on to the developers and give the new project/import pages a go.

Cheers
Yvonne

Hi Yvonne, sorry for asking this again - but have they definitely 'published' and not just changed the project from private to public? In one of your previous messages you said 'The LO is published (i.e. made Public).' but these are two different things. If you make a project public without publishing previously (either using the publish button in the editor or in the workspace) you will get the error you are seeing as none of the data in the preview version will have been 'published' to the public version.

Hi Fay

This is where I wish the buttons said Preview and Save instead of Play and Publish, as the terminology confuses slightly!

The pages are saved in the project (they can be seen in Edit and Play modes) so they must have been 'published' i.e. saved. Is this what you mean? I've never come across this issue before.

The data for each project is saved in to two xml files on the server. There are two of these for each project:
- preview.xml: This is the file that you are making changes to when you are in the editor and is seen when you click 'play' in the editor and preview your project. The preview URL is slightly different to the one you get for live projects (e.g. xot.xerte.org.uk/preview.php?template_id=116).
- play.xml: This is the file that is viewed when you view the public facing version of the project (e.g. xot.xerte.org.uk/play.php?template_id=116).

When you are in the editor, clicking 'play' only saves changes to preview.xml. Clicking 'publish' also saves preview.xml (without previewing) but also pushes the changes you have made to play.xml. The idea behind these two files is that if you have a project that is already live you can make changes to it in the editor and preview what it will look like, without immediately changing the version that's seen publicly. The changes will only be seen publicly when you 'publish' and push the changes to play.xml.

I understand what you mean about the wording on the buttons - I have wondered this myself too. I think we could do with communicating the different roles of the buttons better - or at least prompting people to publish if they make a project live that has never been published.

So, to link all that to your project. It all looks ok when viewing editor and previewing from there because that is all looking at preview.xml. You need to make sure you click publish to push those changes over to play.xml which is used by the live version of the project.