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First off, thank you for all the help! I think I'm finally starting to get my head around some of how to use Backlight. The test site is starting to look more the way I want. An observation and another question...
1. I have satisfied myself that there is just no way (that I can find!) to get the Vegas slideshow to display only image, with no surround, at least when it's placed on a gradient background. In the Theater album template, when I set Slideshow to have no background color, the color set for Base in the page template shows as the "surround". So I finally gave in, changed the page template for the home page to a solid color (disabled the .css gradient), and set Slideshow's background to the same color - it has the effect of disguising the surround color, so it looks like each image is displayed on it's own, so to speak. (see - jwlimages.com/Commerce) If anyone knows a way to get this effect while using a gradient for the page template, please let me know!
2. Back to the Vegas Slideshow itself - the display of images still looks too large - the home page is way too tall to display entirely on my 24" NEC display (1920x1200px). Is there any way I can reduce the size of the images in the presentation, and hopefully the entire page as well? In the album template I have already reduced the Presentation max-width to 980px, as low as it will allow. But the whole page just looks too big & clunky. Thoughts?
Thanks again,
John
Rod & Daniel,
Thank you both. This is helpful info. I'm going back to do some more exploring...
Regards,
John
Hi Rod,
Yes, I think I had correct settings to get my menu set working, but the browser window I had the site in must have been smaller than the 1024 breakpoint - so was getting mobile device display? Anyway it looks better now.
...You can insert an album into the home page. That album uses an album template.
Yes, but if I have more than one album template, how do I determine which gets used? I inserted an album, set up the inline Vegas slideshow, but can't identify which album template is active. (it should be the Pangolin Theater one I created) Maybe worse - if I toggle "show captions" on/off for either of the 2 album templates, no effect on the home page - no captions show. Also tried toggling settings like transition, presentation type, in each album template, just to see which one is at work - again no effect. ???
The Theater album template (the one I thought was active) has Vegas background color set to none. The color of the "box" around the images is set by the Base color from the page template.
One final oddity - the gallery for the home page (00_HomePage…) shows in the Galleries pull-down, despite my setting the Features tab in the album to Hide from Album Set & Hide from Search. Isn't this supposed to keep the album "invisible" from the browser UI or to not clutter up pull-down menus, or am I misunderstanding (again)?
Thanks again,
John
Hi again,
Yes, I see that in the album template I created for the slideshow, so the Home page must be using the 'standard gallery' album template. How do I specify which album template the Home page uses?
- sorry to be so dense - I'm just not getting something about how Designer works...
John
Hi Rod,
Hmm, very confusing. I changed the page template from full-screen to a 'standard' page. Breakpoint is set to 1024px already, Horizontal nav enabled, set to Header, Vertical nav also enabled, set to Pallet 1. But it does look like the mobile nav is only one showing - no Menu Set.
As for the slideshow - I can't find any setting in the album template or the Vegas Slideshow settings that calls for a background color/no color. The surround color seems to be determined by the Base color specified in the page template. I have changed it to a gray, but there is no option to choose no color (XX). Am I stuck here, or am I missing something?
Thanks,
John
I thought your home page was using the Vegas inline presentation, not the full page. If so, there's no need to use a full page template.
Ah, I see. I think I misunderstood the instructions for enabling a slideshow - thought I'd have to use a full-screen page template for any slideshow. Since I want the inline version only, I'll go back to Designer & experiment with using a single "standard" page template. Will let you know how that goes.
it looks like you've disabled the horizontal navigation
No, I have Horizontal enabled, and located it in the Header, with Vertical disabled - but this is with the full-screen page template. It does work in my "standard" page template, so will try to use it instead. (I get the sense that navigation via a Menu Set just doesn't work in a page based on a full-screen template - is that so?)
Thanks again for the guidance, Rod. I'll get back to work on this tomorrow (around the 'Stupor Bowl', of course ;-)
John
Hi Rod,
Thanks for your (speedy!) replies. Will check out settings for Vegas - hope there's a None (XXX) available.
The home page is different (the full-screen page template) from the contact one. Both have a similar base, both are set to use same Menu Set.
John
After a lot of trial & many errors, I'm starting to build a test site with Backlight. But I'm still pretty lost in trying to recreate some basic things I had in my old CE4 site.
I'm trying to build a basic home page and use an inline presentation - a Vegas Slideshow rotating just a few images. Had to screw around a lot with page-size settings in Designer to get the images to display at desired size, but I can't get the slideshow to display just the image itself - as they change from 'portrait' to 'landscape' aspects, they are displayed inside a white rectangle "container". How can I get them displayed as only the photo area, without the white box?
Here's where I've gotten so far: http://jwlimages.com/Commerce/
This is more like how I want the slideshow to appear (a garbled CE4 page, not-yet updated to Backlight): jwlimages.com/Art
Another question is how to get the Menu Set to display on this Home page? The Full-screen template for the home page has the Menu Set specified, and under Navigation I have Horizontal enabled, Location: Header (Vertical Nav disabled), but nothing shows. I would like the whole site to display it as it shows on this test Contact page: http://jwlimages.com/Commerce/contact/
Can anyone give me some pointers?
Thank you so much!
John
As simple as getting rid of that extra space - Thanks!
John
Doh!
OK, will try when I get back to studio.
Thank you, Daniel!
J
I'm still floundering here.
I created a minimal custom css file - basically just what Rod posted, with different hex color values.
Uploaded it to the css folder inside Backlight's directory.
Then from Publisher, edited the page template, enabling Use Custom Stylesheet & selected my .css file.
But no change - looks like the settings in the Color panel still determine the background. What am I missing?
John
OK, thanks. I'll go back & delete this key & redo with the v2 "I am not a robot" one.
John
OK, will check it out.
Thanks again,
John
Setting up my Contact page, I followed instructions for adding reCAPTCHA (I thought!). At the Google site, set up for reCAPTCHA v3 for my domain, then back to Backlight Settings, enabled it under Contact Forms Spam Protection, entered Site key & Secret key. Then to Designer & enabled it on Contact page.
When I save & reload the Contact page, the reCAPTCHA block shows "ERROR for site owner: Invalid key type"
What am I missing?
Thanks,
John
Oops, sorry I need still more help. Where do I enter this text - is it possible thru the Backlight interface, or ???
John
Thank you Rod!
J
I am just starting to rebuild my old CE4 site with Backlight2. Starting with the basics, in Designer I'm building a new default Pangolin page template. In the Color section, all the selections are single colors. I'd like to be able to spec a 2-color gradation for the Base.
Is there any way to do this? Or would it have to be done via an image in the Background section? If the latter, what would be the minimum pixel dimensions for this to work on say, a Retina display?
Thanks,
John
direct email sent
Nope, the current Publisher plug-in gives the same error.
Makes no difference whether I target the backlight folder installed at the root or a second one installed in a subdomain.
Backlight itself seems to be installed & working correctly, e.g. I was able to install the Theater module from within it. But Lightroom (Classic, v.7.5) can't seem to find it...
OK, will try that now.
Thanks!
John
Maybe I should add my API URL: http://jwlimages.com/backlight/publisher/
Also, wondering if part of the issue is how I had configured the CE4-built site. Since I wanted the initial landing page to offer a choice (link to an "Art" section & another to "Commerce", galleries within each section - trying to keep them separate), I built it with that landing page at the root, then the 2 sections as complete sites inside subdomains (hope I'm describing this correctly!). Anyway, thinking I might need to duplicate this structure with Backlight, I tried copying the backlight install folder into the Art subdomain. When I direct Lightroom to the backlight folder in the subdomain I still get that "Authentication was NOT successful" error.
So my website is dead in the water until I can figure this out...
I'm having a similar issue - trying to upgrade directly from CE4 to Backlight2. Following instructions using Backlight's "Upgrade Albums from CE4" - I get the default "Welcome" page as if installing Backlight alone (no galleries, etc.). When I try to create a new Publish instance in Lightroom (or when trying to update existing CE4-generated Instance), I get that same "Authentication was NOT Successful" error.
I had created a new Authentication Key during the Backlight2 setup, and am using correct password for it. (interesting - the old CE4 Publish instance successfully authenticates).
Any troubleshooting suggestions?
Thank you, Rod. I did have some communication with Ben, which was helpful. Turns out the issue was not especially Publisher's at all, tho - it was due to my using a per cent symbol (%) in the filename. The infamous Operator Error, again!
Well, at least now all my TTG components are up-to-date versions, and all is good again.
:-)
John
I have had a website up for awhile now, built w/Publisher, and it has worked well. This week I updated it - removed a couple images, added a few more into a couple different galleries, updated the watermark to 2016, etc. All of this went fine. Then one final image I wanted to add to a gallery refused to upload. Here's the error message:
Unable to perform action: uploadRendition
Unable to authenticate
In Lightroom, when I bring up the Edit Settings dialog to get to Publisher API Settings to "check authentication", LR reports authentication is successful. But I still can't publish this photo - same error.
I've searched the forum & found some people have sort of similar issues, but nothing quite matches. I have updated my TTG plug-ins to current versions, Publisher is v.2.3.3 and TTG BE is now v2.0.5a. LR is current CC version; my Mac is running Yosemite (10.10.5); and Bluehost is provider.
It seems really strange that everything I did with Publisher worked exactly as intended, and then it fails on this one file. Any clues as to what might be going on, and how to troubleshoot?
Thank you in advance!
John