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#1 Re: Backlight 2 Support » Designing the Contact page » 2020-04-17 03:20:12

I don't use the Backlight contact form. Instead I use WordPress for all my non-photo pages.

The issue with the page you have is your using a single "stack" but trying to make it two different stacks. You have the top 5 elements (H3 lines for the contact info). Then below that you have the form. But it's all a sequence of HTML elements, and they appear in a stack.

What you seem to be asking for needs two stacks, or html columns. Then when it's responsive on a smaller screen the two columns need to collapse into a single one. When this happens, do you want the top remain as your contact info or the form? When the two collapse into one, you want the top column to be on the left when it's two. You've placed it on the right.

At least that's how it's done in html/css on typical web pages. I'm not exactly sure how to do this using the Backlight page template.

#2 Re: Backlight 2 Support » Masthead width » 2020-04-07 03:25:46

Steve,

I find there is 24px of padding added to the left and right of your masthead. Is that what you're trying to remove?

Check the masthead's left/right padding in Backlight. I bet you have it set to 24, and you want 0.

#3 Re: Backlight 2 Support » Scroll through search results not working: www.tasmanianphotos.com » 2020-04-05 01:32:34

I'm not sure of the cause, but here's the problem.

  1. Search for "primrose"

  2. Click on an image in the search result

  3. Verify you find "primrose" on that page

  4. Click on the right arrow to view the next image in the search result.

  5. Verify that the URL now ends with
    ?origin=https://www.tasmanianphotos.com/backlight/search/?q=Primrose

  6. Click on the right arrow to view the next image in the search result.

  7. Check new URL, notice it is now just ?q

  8. Clicking on the right arrow at this point will take you to the next image in the current album

#4 Re: Backlight 2 Support » Publisher in Lightroom linked to parked domain URL - how to change? » 2020-03-21 04:30:16

Sensorman wrote:

I have two different sites.  I have no idea how I've managed to do that.

Well, there are several ways to have created this.

You have two domains and both are live. You want to take the old one offline, but redirect the entire domain to your new one. You can do that in several ways, either at your hosting service or by redirect rules on the old domain.

You can easily prove the old domain is still online. Just go to any of these links:
https://sensormanphoto.co.uk/
https://sensormanphoto.co.uk/galleries/
https://sensormanphoto.co.uk/about/

Sensorman wrote:

Do I need to find a sensormanphoto.co.uk folder within my sensormanphoto.com folder?

No. The domain is what you registered, and then have setup in DNS. You're pointing your domain name (via DNS) to the server at your host. Both domains are pointing at some server, at some host. I can't tell anything more about that, but you can. You setup the DNS, and you can log into your host.

The first question is to understand where the old domain is pointing - to which server at your host.

It looks to me that the old domain is pointing at the *same* server. Both sites seem to have the same mirrored content.

But what is odd is how some of the menu items at the old domain site link to the old domain *and* sometimes to the new domain.

As far as I can guess, you have Backlight for publishing galleries and also to create your WordPress theme. But I'm only guessing.

Check all of your menus and links on your site. By that I mean within BackLight and if you're using WordPress there too. Make sure all of your links are using the right domain.

It's actually better to remove the domain, so this type of problem doesn't happen. Instead of linking to:

https://sensormanphoto.com/about/

You would link to:

/about/

This way the links are all "relative"

#5 Re: Backlight 2 Support » Publisher in Lightroom linked to parked domain URL - how to change? » 2020-03-21 01:49:04

Sensorman, in Backlight - on your web site at https://sensormanphoto.com/backlight/ - check your Site URL.

Sensorman wrote:

Obviously, my sensormanphoto.co.uk parked domain redirects to the correct gallery

Nope, it doesn't actually. If I go here:

http://sensormanphoto.co.uk/galleries/

It redirects to here:

https://sensormanphoto.co.uk/galleries/

This is a misconfiguration of your protocol (http vs https), and it's only redirecting that - and NOT the domain.

What you have are two different sites, which also means two different galleries. One at sensormanphoto.co.uk and one at sensormanphoto.com.

#6 Re: Backlight 2 Support » Cannot log in to admin » 2020-03-21 01:33:09

Looks like an error message from your server, which obviously failed to fulfill an insane request to allocate 140,000 gigabytes. That's far more than all of the storage I have, including all my raw photos and a years worth of daily backups.

To help you, we'd need to know how you encountered this insanity. We don't even know this was in Backlight. Where did you find this error message? Are you using WordPress for your pages? Any custom code? Any Plugins? Are you using PHPPlugins? What's the URL? How did you trigger this?

#7 Re: Backlight 2 Support » Noindex tag set on albums » 2020-03-16 01:14:10

This is still a redirect chain. The first is one you originally mentioned. I think you found it using Screaming Frog, but I don't see it in your navigation. Not sure where this was coming from or if it's still a link. It's missing the ending slash. This type of problem typically happens when you manually enter the link and forget to leave off the ending slash.

The second link is using the wrong protocol. It should be https. Not sure where that is coming from. Could be your server or htaccess file.

https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries … -eaton-run
http://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries/ … eaton-run/
https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries … eaton-run/


This next one is odd.

https://adecentexposure.co.uk has a 301 redirects to
https://www.adecentexposure.co.uk

That is causing your home page to load more slowly. This might be something at your DNS level, or a setting at your server, or even possibly in WordPress.

I noted that the URLs in your main navigation are set to the www sub-domain, which is indicating that you're WordPress web site is set to that sub-domain and not the naked domain.

I prefer the naked domain, and not the www sub-domain. It's a matter of personal preference but I don't think you're using sub-domains.

I also noted that your domain and your home page have a different URL, which is wrong. The domain does take you to the home page, but in the menu home is set to this:

https://www.adecentexposure.co.uk/home/

So you end up having two different home pages. This can confuse Google and will mess up your analytics. This might be a setting in WordPress, where you're site's main page should be set to https://www.adecentexposure.co.uk. Also change your menus so you're not pointing home to /home/ and make sure that's not in your sitemap.



I still find a 302 redirect on for http pages to https. They should be 301, not 302.

http://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries/ … eaton-run/
https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries … eaton-run/


It's also odd that your galleries are not under the www sub-domain, telling me your Backlight configuration doesn't match your WordPress settings.

Again, I think you don't want to use the www sub-domain in WordPress. Then also check that your DNS and/or server settings are consistent with using the naked domain.

Decide on what you'll use: www sub-domain or the naked domain, and then make sure all links are using the same one.

Having both will confuse google. adecentexposure.co.uk and www.adecentexposure.co.uk are TWO DIFFERENT SITES!


By the way, you don't want your search page to be indexed. Mark this flag as noindex.

https://www.adecentexposure.co.uk/backlight/search/

#8 Re: Backlight 2 Support » Noindex tag set on albums » 2020-03-09 09:27:26

Another odd thing, this URL is not in your sitemap.

https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries … eaton-run/

Then I noticed something else odd. You have what appears to be two copies of a directory with the same (or very similar) content.

https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries/
https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries2/

I couldn't find the source for the second one. Looks to be an "orphan" set of albums. If you don't like to them on your pages, include them in the navigation, or in the sitemap, Google won't find them during it's crawl of your site.

One more thing, the use of a - (dash) is considered a delimitar. In this example slug photos-horse-race Google will interpret that as three words: photos, horse, and race.

If you use _ (underlines) it's considered as quoting the terms together. In other words, this slug photos_horse_race is one entire term and not three. Instead of matching for a search of photos about horse races, you're saying the term is "photos horse race" and should only match if someone did that exact search.

Only use the _ (underline) when you mean to join two or more terms, such as ford_fiesta where you are not trying to match with the general term fiesta but have a page that is about the Ford car.

Don't worry too much about the URLs. The page title and content are considered much more so than the URL. Just realize SEO is a complex topic, and details like using an _ in URLs actually does mean something.

#9 Re: Backlight 2 Support » Noindex tag set on albums » 2020-03-09 09:08:06

I use Screaming From, SEMRush, and many other SEO tools dailly.

The easiest way to confirm if Google has indexed your content is using the Google Search Console. A really simple way to find what's indexed is to use a Google search.

Enter this search query at the main Google.com search page to show your indexed pages:
site:adecentexposure.co.uk

Enter this search query to find what pages on your site are linked with the term "game." It appears on every page because that term is one in your navigation menus, so every page appears in that search. This is an example of how choosing your taxonomy is important. Try using a unique term to find more specific pages.
site:adecentexposure.co.uk game


https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries … prom-2020/ is protected and tagged noindex. This makes sense. You don't want the entrance to a private page indexed.

https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries … eaton-run/ is public and robots meta tags are not defined. This is also the expected behavior. This page would be index, if found by Google.

But the reason that albums is not indexed, and not showing up in the searches above, is due to a redirect.

This URL has a 302 redirect:
https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries … eaton-run/

It takes you to this URL, which then also has a 302 redirect:
http://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries/ … eaton-run/

The final destination is back to this page:
https://adecentexposure.co.uk/galleries … eaton-run/


What you above here is a "redirect chain." You want to get rid  of all these.

You can get a redirect report from Screaming Frog. You can also see that Screaming Frog is reporting your page as if it were noindexed because it's a redirect. It's telling you how Google sees it.

You also want to confirm that all the redirects are in fact what you need them to be.

Redirected URLs will not be indexed. Only the final destination page will be. In this case you're confusing Google by redirecting through a chain back to itself.

Also, you do NOT want to use 302 redirects. Those mean temporary, and would only be used when you take a page off line temporarily and want a substitute page in the meantime. Search engines will keep checking waiting to find the page return.

If you really want a redirects, you would use a 301 which is a permanent redirect. You use this when you are replacing a page.

But in your case, it doesn't appear that you want any redirects. You have a bug here that is causing a redirect chain (loop actually). You're going from https to http to https all for the same page. Several things could be causing this, and I couldn't really guess without understanding more about your backend.

#10 Re: Backlight 2 Support » Noindex tag set on albums » 2020-03-09 01:23:33

The only albums on my site tagged noindex are the ones I've set as private. That's the only way I can think of to cause this.

Is your site https://www.adecentexposure.co.uk?

I couldn't find any albums tagged noindex.

#11 Re: Backlight 2 Support » SEARCH errors in results » 2020-02-29 02:09:17

I tried a search for "tnm 2019-2020" (without the quotes) and got results that are correct. Each of the results contains tnm or 2019-2020.

Maybe you're thinking the search is using AND when it's really OR. It matches the first term OR the second one. If you want results that include both tnm and 2019-2020 then you need to use this +tnm +2019-2020

Another issue, the character - means NOT. If you search for 2020 you'll get results. If you search for -2020 you get nothing. If you search for 2019-2020 you get a few results. The query without the space seems to be interpreted as being quoted.

If you search for 2019 -2020 you get different results, for that is a search for items that include 2019 and NOT 2020.


I've done a lot of work with search, and user behavior. People are not engineers, and do not read instructions. Simply understanding the difference between AND and OR is too difficult for most. Quoting a string to find that exact match is about all they'll understand. Using the - or + options isn't something they'll understand.

All of this detail is not something a typical visitor will understand. As you're finding for yourself, you're at a loss to explain the results. You think it's returning errors, but it's doing exactly what you requested. It is documented http://theturninggate.net/2018/02/19/ma … ts-search/


About the only search you can expect from the typical users is for them to use the standard OR, such as: tnm 2020

That will return results without tnm and results without 2020, but included one OR the other.

If you only want tnm AND 2020, note that nobody will do this, but you need to use: +tnm +2020

And note how the way you've titled galleries, to have two years in their categorization, the last search above is the same as: +tnm +2019


Step back and think of how you're trying to help the visitor find content, and level that against the expectation they do not understand search logic.

Then design the taxonomy (names of theaters, shows, years, etc) to support that. I would avoid using a term such as "2019-2020" as it's going to lead to a lot of grief.

For example, this search will seem correct to a typical person but is a mistake: tnm 2019 - 2020

#12 Re: Backlight 2 Support » HTML for Ordered List » 2020-02-21 08:57:55

Yup - Rod got it.

You'll fine this in the backlight css

ol li {
    list-style-type: circle;
}

and you want this

ol li {
    list-style-type: decimal;
}


Then in your BCPA.css you have this

ol {
    list-style-type: decimal;
}

but that's being overrode by the more specific element in the backlight css. You can see this because in the Chrome inspector your style element is crossed out.

But I don't think you need to do this in your BCPA.css

Check your settings Rod is referring to.

#13 Re: Backlight 2 Support » HTML for Ordered List » 2020-02-21 07:43:40

I've tackled this problem before. If I can see a page with the problem, I'll take a look.

#14 Re: Backlight 2 Support » Forcing https on admin backend » 2020-02-20 06:06:59

In your BL settings, what is your Site URL? The Wordpress URL? Are they using http or https?

I don't have this problem. All my page assets are linked via https.

I didn't need anything to change in .htaccess. I'd rather not modify that file.

My hosting service provides a setting to force all pages to load via https. That's all it took to get what I think you're after.

#15 Re: Backlight 2 Support » Search Strings » 2020-02-16 14:44:44

chumby wrote:

I search for "West Coast" and I am returned results for "North West Coast".

That's normal. Works the same at Google and other search tools.

The specific text you want to find is contained in the result you're showing.

#16 Re: Backlight 2 Support » Lightroom Feature Password not available » 2020-02-03 13:51:26

By the way - you might want to create a custom thumb nail for those private galleries. I use one of a simple padlock and chain. Otherwise you might end up with a random thumb from one of the images in your gallery.

#17 Re: Backlight 2 Support » Website search is followed by name Home » 2020-01-31 04:07:09

First, Google (or any search engine) doesn't promise that the title they show on their search results will be the exact title you have on your web site. Same with the description. They can (and do) alter these.

The title you have set for the page at https://www.brockbradford.com/ is this:

"Home - Brock Bradford Big Sur Photography"

Google will re-arrange the wording in this case because it wants to put the most important words at the start. Since you have "Home in the title" it's moved it to the end.

All you need to do is remove "home" from your page title.

There's another reason. The page you link to in your Home menu is this:

https://brockbradford.com/?page=home

Google is seeing that and assuming they need to include "home" at the end of your page title, because you're using it as a URL parameter to find this specific page.

This issue seems to be true for all your main pages.

You also have a page https://www.brockbradford.com/Iconic/ but I can't find it in your menus. Also note how the slug starts with a capital I (but URLs should be all lower case). This page is what is called an orphan, since I can't find a link to it in your menus.

You also have a page https://www.brockbradford.com/?page=Iconic but it's a different page.

This pattern seems to be happening for other pages such as "impressions" "light" "about" "home"

The use of ?page= is bad form. You want to use "pretty" links without the ? parameter.

Are you using WordPress to create these pages? Have a read of this article: https://www.webnots.com/what-is-wordpre … change-it/

Your other site bigsurspirit.com has the same issue.


You also have no description on your pages (at least the main pages). It should be about 150 characters.

Google has invented one for you, "I'm a photographer printmaker exploring the iconic and creative process of capturing the light of Nature and experiencing the inspiring radiance of Creation."

#18 Backlight 2 Support » Breadcrumbs > data-vocabulary.org schema deprecated » 2020-01-22 05:18:24

JimR
Replies: 3

Google is flagging Backlight's use of Breadcrumbs as deprecated, and issues a warning (as of Jan 21, 2020).

It's possible this is a spurious warning, and will go away in a few days, but in this case I think it's correct.

Google has adopted other options for specifying Breadcrumbs.

https://developers.google.com/search/do … breadcrumb


Without looking into this closely, I suspect this is a simple enough fix. There are a number of ways to solve this. This seems like the simplest one, taken from Google's examples:

Given this breadcrumb

Books › Science Fiction › Award Winners

the HTML would be

<ol itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/BreadcrumbList">
  <li itemprop="itemListElement" itemscope
      itemtype="https://schema.org/ListItem">
    <a itemprop="item" href="https://example.com/books">
        <span itemprop="name">Books</span></a>
    <meta itemprop="position" content="1" />
  </li>
  ›
  <li itemprop="itemListElement" itemscope
      itemtype="https://schema.org/ListItem">
    <a itemprop="item" href="https://example.com/books/sciencefiction">
       <span itemprop="name">Science Fiction</span></a>
    <meta itemprop="position" content="2" />
  </li>
  ›
  <li itemprop="itemListElement" itemscope
      itemtype="https://schema.org/ListItem">
    <span itemprop="name">Award winners</span>
    <meta itemprop="position" content="3" />
  </li>
</ol>

#19 Re: Backlight 2 Support » How to make the random picture work at the Album set level (Gallerie)? » 2020-01-10 07:35:43

It just works for me. Do you have a link to your albums, so we can see what's not working?

#20 Re: Backlight 2 Support » Error in Lightroom Publisher » 2019-12-17 04:50:39

Paul wrote:

multiple concurrent publish tasks has never worked right

100% true. I've never seen it work if I try to publish more than one album at a time. Worse, when it fails I've gotten LR and the server out of sync, causing a newer and bigger problem.

So my superstition is to never attempt to publish more than one album at a time. Click on one, and only one. Publish. Then wait until it's complete before publishing another.

I have had good luck publishing an album set containing dozens of albums. Seems that LR will only publish one at a time. Still, I've had some failures even doing this.

I mostly find these types of problems when I do a massive update to my site. So it's only a pain in those rare occurrences.

Blame Adobe for this.

#21 Re: Backlight 2 Support » Clickable elements too close together » 2019-12-17 04:41:43

Argh - after looking in to this and not finding what should change, I tried "verify fix" in Google's Search Console. After reporting an error, and not making any changes, now Google is saying there's no problem.

I can only guess it's some spurious problem that wasn't really a problem. I hate computers.

#22 Backlight 2 Support » Clickable elements too close together » 2019-12-13 11:33:19

JimR
Replies: 4

Interesting. This can effect page rank.

I haven't changed any of this, but today Google is complaining. I suspect others will start seeing this as well.

I'll look at the CSS and see if I can make adjustments.

TTG should look into making the defaults according to Google's requirements.

Clickable elements too close together

This report shows the URLs for sites where touch elements, such as buttons and navigational links, are so close to each other that a mobile user cannot easily tap a desired element with their finger without also tapping a neighboring element. To fix these errors, make sure to correctly size and space buttons and navigational links to be suitable for your mobile visitors. Read more in Size Tap Targets Appropriately.

#23 Re: Backlight 2 Support » Font Awesome » 2019-11-27 05:39:26

I use FA v5. You need to read the docs for how to make that work. It's easy, but there's some setup.

https://fontawesome.com/start

#24 Re: Backlight 2 Support » ADA compliance » 2019-11-13 07:47:14

I think the meta tokens is something to leverage when creating file names. This allows us (the content creators) to control things, rather than having you try to find a generic algorithm that works for everyone (and makes them happen).

For a file name, I would use a general pattern of <something><unique number>

<something> would be Title, or if no title then Caption. I use meta tokens to create my captions. If none is given, then it defaults to the folder name containing the image. I'd like to keep this idea for file names. So I guess I'm asking if meta tokens can be used to generate <something> in the file name.

<unique number> could be the number from the original image file name (e.g. IMG_7050). In other words, replace the "IMG" with the new <something>. I would avoid making it a sequence, since re-publishing would end up changing file names and confusing search engines. If you can't get to the original number in the file name, you can use the capture date to generate a unique number. It would have to be something like YYMMDDHHMMSS to be truly unique.

If you run into a name collision, you'd have to do something like adding "_2" to the end for the 2nd dup, "_3" for the 3rd, and so on.

#25 Re: Backlight 2 Support » Backlight 2 Wordpress Plugin - Mobile theme » 2019-11-05 01:05:21

Jetpack - just say no. I think of it as a huge mess. Jack of all trades, master of none. Everything it does can be done better by specialized plugins or custom coding.

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