Community @ The Turning Gate

The bitly isn't what I want, since those are full of gobbledygook and hard to remember or type.  Remember, this is so that I can print an easily memorable url in a show brochure.

My first thought was a page at the target location ("/travel") that just had an HTML redirect. However, my reading said that it was considered the least desirable for a bunch of reasons that I no longer remember.  Each of the sites I went to said the .htaccess redirect was the cleanest, so is the way I went with.

As for creating a duplicate page -- that would work today, but has too much risk of quickly getting out of sync, since all these galleries are fluid as we travel more and have other events to track.

Thanks for your suggestions, but it looks like Ben came up with the solution that I will be using this time.

That did it -- thanks again!

@Daniel --

I am using the TTG Publisher module from Lightroom.  Just checking now, and I don't see any way to define the thumbnails at that top level.  I can do it for each of the album sets I created, but not for the top level 'gallery'.

Or is there something I am missing in the Publisher too?

Thanks -- I'll see if I can give that a try.  I actually knew CSS about 15 years ago, but haven't done any coding in it since then, and now after 5 years of full retirement, have trouble making sense of what used to be second-nature...

That was true yesterday, but I added the thumbnails to all the galleries last night.  Could you please clear your cache and check again?  If you find any that do not have a thumbnail, I would really appreciate a specific pointer.  I just went through them all here on Firefox (which I clear cache on frequently, and use only for tests like this), and every gallery set I saw had a thumbnail.

@Rod - Thanks!  That does show now.  I had not used that, thinking it would show up in the right-column pallet I use on the computer for 'recent posts' and the like.

The BL designer does say that the menu will be 'flat' on mobile devices.  I believe (after seeing it now) that means that all submenus are visible at all times.

Is there any way to change that, so that only top level menus are visible until one is chosen?  As is now ("flat"), the user has to scroll through an awful lot of 'travel' items before reaching the next main topic ("art", then "studio", etc)

@ Daniel -- YOU FIXED IT!!

Poking around, on a hunch, I changed the name of the root ".htaccess.bak" to ".htaccess" and tried the website. Those links now work!

So the problem (I think) is that there was no .htaccess file at all.  I still do not understand the content of that file or why it would have this effect, but the links are now working, and I will settle for that after these last couple weeks!

THANKS AGAIN!

Ouch. One more thing that doesn't work. I had not noticed that one yet...

Probably not...  When I first installed BL2, I copied over the .htaccess and index.php, but goofed and put them in the wrong directory (the root instead of the BL2 -- drag and hit-wrong-target).  I would not be surprised if the current .htaccess is thus the "wrong one"...

However... I thought the .htaccess just defined who could log on, what their passwords and privileges are.  Does it control something that would mess up these file paths too???

That is exactly what I ended up deducing.

I would like to recommend that info be put in the documentation for both BL menus and WP theme.  It is not at all the behavior I expected, which is how I got into such a fix until I deleted the WP menu as a test (at which point I thought it was still failing, since WP said there was no menu).

I can certainly live with the current approach.  I just would have appreciated not running in circles for a day trying to figure out WTHeck I did wrong this time...!

@Daniel -

Interesting guess about the display size. However, I am on a maxed-out iMac Pro with two 27" displays, so that isn't the issue...

Note my last response (after you suggested the display size). Turns out that WP seeing no menu at all is a GOOD THING.  If WP complains there is no menu, then it will use the BL2 supplied one when the site actually runs.

The problem i had earlier was that i did have a different menu on WP.  When that exists, WP insists on using it, and does not let the BL2 menu shine through.  Once I deleted the WP menu, suddenly the web site worked properly again!

@Daniel --

Well, da**...  Here are my steps in screenshots. Can you see where i might have made a mistake?

    https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0qhmevt8qebt … 6_Xta?dl=0

01-menu sets.png -- in BL2, shows the menu sets that exist

02-menu design.png -- in BL2, shows the first page of the design of that single menu

03-templates.png -- in BL2, shows the templates that exist

04-create new MSP WP template.png -- in BL2, shows that I created a new Wordpress template called MSP

05-settings for MSP WP.png -- in BL2, shows the settings i have for the MSP WP template

06-MSP WP now created.png -- in BL2, shows that I have created and exported the theme to WP

07-MSP settings.png -- in BL2, shows the settings for that WP template

11-WP showing MSP exists.png -- in Wordpress, showing themes, including the new MSP

12-WP MSP made active.png - in WP, shows I have made that new BL2 theme active

13-WP MSP has no menu.png - in WP, shows that no menus are available to that theme in WP

That surprises me.  That is what I ended up doing in 2014 when I made the CE4 site, but doing so caused a lot of grief.  Trying to keep them identical as new galleries were added, and trying to get them to look the same was a PITA.

I can always do that again, but i was trying to do it "right" this time and not get caught in that same endless chasing-my-tail situation.

The web site is -- www.mindstormphoto.com

Mathew helped me get back a roadblock this weekend, where the blog was not showing up. Turned out I had inadvertently copied the BL2 index.php file one directory too high, which meant it wiped out the Wordpress file of that name.  Reverted to the Wordpress index.php file from a couple weeks ago, and the blog worked fine.

However, I later realized the menus no longer worked in that case. More investigation shows the menu from the Wordpress BL customization is being used, instead of the menu created in the BL2 templates.

to answer your specific question about menu in Navigation. There is nowhere to indicate the menu name to be used there. I can indicate the colors, directions, etc, but not the menu name itself.

Here is a screenshot of the Navigation section of the Page template to show what I am looking at... just in case you meant somewhere else:

     https://www.dropbox.com/s/gusbuh6llbwqm … u.png?dl=0

Note that there is currently no menu at all on that web site, since my last attempt was to delete it on Wordpress, hoping I could then see the BL2 menu.  Can't see it though, leaving me no menu at all.