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This looks like it should work. Just make sure that the folder containing your WordPress installation is not the "home" directory as there will be a conflict between WordPress' index.php file and Backlight's index.php file.
Thanks Rod -- I do intend to keep them in separate folders. Will give it a shot and see how it works!!
Bill
Hi Volker,
You should be able to move Backlight around without issue. There's just two gotchas:
1. Make sure to update Backlight => Settings with the current location.
2. You shouldn't move published galleries; they should be un-published from the old location, then re-published to the new location. For this reason, if setting up a test site, you should work with just one or two test galleries, then publish your actual portfolio live at your permanent location.
Let me expand on the above and make sure I am headed in the correct direction to meet my goal.
My goal is to upgrade my Wordpress based site containing a CE4 gallery to a site that is a Backlight + Pages site that contains a Wordpress blog.
I wish to do this without moving Wordpress. Wordpress is easy enough to move, but it appears from Matthew's comment above that it is easier to move backlight than to move Wordpress.
* Where I am now *
I have the latest Backlight, Pages, and Wordpress modules and have tested them in a test site. They work together well. The test site is set up as you suggested with its root folder containing the following:
- backlight folder (including the Wordpress and Pages modules)
- galleries folder
- wordpress folder
- index.php (the Backlight version)
I have upgraded my existing production "Wordpress site with CE4 gallery" to be a "Wordpress site with Backlight gallery". Wordpress now uses the Backlight generated template. It works well. Pages is not installed at this time. The Wordpress menu "Gallery" entry points users to the Backlight gallery.
My production Wordpress site is located in a directory named "wrdp" that lives one level below the "home" directory and contains:
- backlight folder (live)
- galleries folder (live)
- publisher folder (now obsolete)
- ttg-be folder (now obsolete)
- all of the wordpress files and folders including the Wordpress index.php file (all live)
The domain name is pointed to the "home/wrdp" directory.
What I plan to do is recreate the situation in my test directory in my "home" directory:
- move the backlight folder up one level to the "home" directory
- move the galleries folder up one level to the "home" directory
- update the backlight settings and pointers
- point Lightroom to the new backlight location
- point the domain name to the "home" directory
- install the Pages module
- add "blog" to the backlight menu and point it to the Wordpress directory
- get on with tweaking Backlight and Wordpress to work together.
Is this the easiest way to accomplish my goal? Is there another, better way? Have I missed anything?
Thanks for your input.
Bill
Sandy Springs GA
I'm running Backlight and Pages. After uploading updates to both, Backlight will not accept my log-in and returns me to the admin login screen when I try. Have not been able to complete the update process. Have repeated the delete / upload process twice.
When I go the the URL for the Backlight site, I see this in a red panel:
Something went wrong
Update query failed with error: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1 no such column: type sql: 'UPDATE `engine_view` SET `name`=\'include\', `type`=\'dynamic\', `path`=\'\', `rename`=\'\', `passthrough`=\'no\', `modified`=\'2016-11-13 22:38:26\' WHERE `engine_id`=\'89\' AND `view_id`=\'view.include\'' params: array ( ) in PdoExtended.php on line 552Bill Cobb
Thanks to Ben for his quick response to my quandary. If any of you encounter my situation -- which was not being able to log in after loading the v1.1.0 Backlight software -- be sure to refresh your browser to load a new copy of the admin login page. Evidently I had not. My hypothesis is that the old version of admin login page loaded in my cache could not communicate with the new software that was loaded to my server, so threw up its hands and returned control to me with no error message. When I finally got smart and refreshed my browser to display the new admin login page (and the spiffy new TTG logo in its upper left hand corner), everything returned to normal. If you don't see new logo after loading the new software, refresh your browser.
All is good in Georgia.
Bill Cobb
Hi Bill, which version of Backlight were you updating from? 1.0.5 or something earlier?
Can you provide me with a Backlight admin login, via the Email link under my picture. It would also be helpful to have FTP access so that I can see what's going wrong on the server.
I was updating from 1.0.3. Will send info shortly. Thanks. - Bill
I'm running Backlight and Pages. After uploading updates to both, Backlight will not accept my log-in and returns me to the admin login screen when I try. Have not been able to complete the update process. Have repeated the delete / upload process twice.
When I go the the URL for the Backlight site, I see this in a red panel:
Something went wrong
Update query failed with error: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1 no such column: type sql: 'UPDATE `engine_view` SET `name`=\'include\', `type`=\'dynamic\', `path`=\'\', `rename`=\'\', `passthrough`=\'no\', `modified`=\'2016-11-13 22:38:26\' WHERE `engine_id`=\'89\' AND `view_id`=\'view.include\'' params: array ( ) in PdoExtended.php on line 552
Bill Cobb
I run several Backlight based sites as well as one CE3 site and one CE4 site on several shared servers (two accounts due to client preferences - they could all run under one account) at HostGator and have not had issues. Support is good when I need it, and pricing for new accounts is competitive.
Bill Cobb
Sandy Springs GA
Rebuilding from Lightroom into a fresh galleries directory is a manual process:
1. In the Backlight Admin, navigate to Backlight > Publisher > Top-level Galleries
2. Click on Albums for the Galleries entry
3. One by one click on each album set or album on the top level.
4. For each, click on Delete Album at the bottom of the page.
5. Delete any remaining albums and album sets within galleries/ on your server using FTP. Depending on the state of your database, this may already have been done during deletion of albums and album sets in steps 1-4.Once you no longer have any albums or album sets under 'Galleries' at Backlight > Publisher > Top-level Galleries, there should be no further trace of those albums on your server.
6. In Lightroom, visit every album set from the top down, right clicking each, editing the album set, changing the slug to remove any appended numbers if needed, and clicking Save (or 'Edit'). The process of editing and saving re-creates the album set on the server.
7. Do the same for the albums within every album set. and clicking Save (or 'Edit')
8. Republish your photos
This process is a keeper - it has been added to my cookbook! Back up and running in about 20 minutes. Was expecting a painful process --- it is not.
It is nice to have the support of a team who has thought through what it will take to recover from a disaster, built the needed tools, and made themselves available to talk us through what it takes to recover. Thanks Matt & Ben
Bill
Ben, I won't rule that out. I was moving quickly today and may have self inflicted my wound. I am not dwelling on that for now.
As this may occur again for me or others, I thought it best to post the situation and get your input on the best way to proceed.
Thanks for the quick response.
Guess I know what I'll be doing for the next several hours :-)
Bill
Interesting situation. Somehow my Backlight "galleries" folder disappeared from my server. No idea how, and at this point that is not my key issue. Getting the galleries folder rebuilt without having to rebuild the Publisher collections -- and the verbiage in each -- in Lightroom is my key interest.
I moved an empty copy of a galleries folder into the web site directory and tried to republish the albums and album sets from Lightroom. After a number of false starts, permission error messages, and Lightroom publishing the gallery to a completely unrelated server directory (which was fortunately in the correct web site), I was able to get Lightroom to publish the album set and albums to the correct web directory. Per a cursory look via Coda2, it appears that the files needed for Backlight to display the gallery exist.
I can see at least one issue -- the slug name for one of the albums has a "5" appended to the end in the Lightroom Edit Album panel, while the web server directory does not (friday-brunch5 vs friday-brunch). Lightroom does not seem to mind and still re-publishes that album upon request.
Unfortunately, the web site created by Backlight did not get the message. What it shows is not what is in the galleries folder (on the web site) or in the Albums in Lightroom. The Gallery pages generated by Backlight show a mix of album sets and albums. Some have images ... some do not ... some are albums and some are album sets. See this page: http://dbhs60.org/galleries/55th-reunion/ Look at the "Photos" sub-menu item under the 55th Reunion Menu item and compare it to the structure in Lightroom:
- Album Set "55th Reunion"
- Album "Friday Brunch"
- Album "Organizing Committee Appreciation Lunch"
- Album "Thursday Dinner"
- Album "Other Photos"
Note that album set "55th Reunion 2" shown on the page described was created in an effort to work around earlier issues and was deleted from Lightroom before the version of the web site you see was generated. "55th Reunion 2" is still being displayed by Backlight's generated web site even though it does not exist. I have cleared the cache several times to no avail.
Bottom line, is there a way to reset Backlight's database and republish the Gallery from Lightroom into a clean folder without having to rebuild everything in Lightroom? And reset Lightroom so that it thinks it is publishing into a clean slate? Or do I have to start over?
Note to Matthew & Ben: I checked to confirm that the "pages/" option is still the selected "Page URL Format" on the Backlight Settings page. It is.
Bill
Thanks Ben. Appreciate your quick response and the solution.
Bill
Here is the content of the message:
---------
Something went wrong
Unexpected error: Undefined variable: url in MenuHelper.php on line 161
Please report error at http://community.theturninggate.net
----------
The error message appears at the bottom of several pages such as:
- http://dbhs60.org/galleries/55th-reunion/
- http://dbhs60.org/?page=attendees
I suspect it is related to the attendees page, which was the last page added to the site. The page displays as designed.
Let me know what I can do to help sort it out.
- Bill
---------------
Followup to above: Menu links to my pages no longer work. I can view the pages by manually entering the page ID in the URL or viewing them with the Backlight View Page "View page in browser" link. There two pages:
- attendees. Link is under the 2015 reunion menu item
- Contact us. Link is at the menu top level.
I converted a CE4 site to Backlight today following TTG instructions. This is the second site I have implemented in Backlight -- the first was a clean install of a new site. This one was a conversion of a CE4 site.
-- The Symptoms --
The conversion process seemed to work well, but at the end, I noticed that although all of the converted albums were formatted properly, my Album Set was not formatted properly. (My gallery has 4 albums -- three in one set and another that is a standalone album.) The three albums in the set were each formatted properly, and one album outside the set was formatted properly, but the album set page was unreadable. Also, all the captions in all four albums were gone.
-- My Solution --
If you see this symptom after a CE4 to backlight conversion, save yourself some head scratching and check that you have updated in Lightroom the Publisher API URL from the ttg-be directory to the backlight directory. I had not, and even though I checked the API Key after installing Backlight, Lightroom evidently validated it against the old (ttg-be) API URL (I used the same API Key for ttg-be and Backlight) and told me all was copacetic.
Happy dance -- all is good now!!
Bill
Thanks Matthew -- somehow I missed your post of 7/9 -- just saw it over in the Backlight Tips & Tricks section. Your suggestion of 7/9 works like a charm!
Very happy with the new product no issues with the latest release so far. Enjoy your time away.
- Bill
Matthew, after playing with tables in my Backlight site versus how they are handled in static sites, I now see why Backlight tables act the way they do. Tables don't scale at all in normal sites, but in Backlight sites they scale nicely. I would like to have tables that don't fill the entire width, but if that isn't possible without breaking their smooth scaling, it won't be worth it. I will figure out ways to work with what you have given us. Good job -- u da man!
I know tables are discouraged for formatting data because at times they don't scale well, but sometimes they are the only option.
I can live with the hand spaced names, email addresses and phone numbers on my contact page (spaced out using non-breaking spaces " "), but sometime in the future I will need to use a table.
Thanks for the input.
Bill
Tried it ... no love. I changed the %s to narrow the table and it still filled the page. See at:
http://www.kurtsalumni.com/contact/
What you will see is with this spec, tweaked from the example you referenced.
<table border="1" width="50%">
<col style="width:20%">
<col style="width:15%">
<col style="width:15%">
<thead>
I cannot get a table I added to the Backlight Contact page Main Copy area to respect specified column widths. I gave up on my table and used table HTML code Matthew suggested in another (CE4) post. Results were the same.
<table>
<col width="100">
<col width="100">
<col width="30">
<tr>
<td>20" X 30"</td>
<td style="text-align:right;">$300</td>
<td style="text-align:right;">$750</td>
</tr>
</table>
The table width stretches to fill the entire Main Copy area width, and looks rather silly.
Same with code from a w3schools example (used as a sanity check). It works fine on their "try it" sample, limiting column widths to the specified values, but not on the Backlight contact page. I have not tried adding a table to other pages.
Is there a way to cause this table to respect the specified width?
Thanks,
Bill
Hi Tom, I've been able to fix your template by appending ?reloadModel&skipCache to the end of an album URL.
What this does is reloads the settings structure for the web engine (e.g. Standard Album), picking up elements that have changed. In this case, 1.0.2 added a scaffolding JS file that hadn't been coming through.
This undocumented step should not have been necessary. The change of version from 1.0.1 to 1.0.2 should have triggered the reload.
I was having the same issue as TomO. Ben's suggestion fixed it. thank you Ben!!
- Bill Cobb
is that a touch screen?
The iPad is; the MacBook isn't.
This should be low priority as the feature works fine on the MacBook, but I hope it will be addressed at some point. I can do most Backlight tasks on my 12" iPad (modify templates, add pages, edit css using Coda, edit content, et cetera) but I'll always need to carry the MacBook in order to publish from Lightroom when we are on the road.
This is a nit - in the big picture, the product rates 'outstanding' in my book. Haven't found many features that I use that Backlight does not support, and design mods are so EASY to implement. I am about ready to migrate my first CE4 gallery into Backlight -- stay tuned.
- Bill Cobb
FYI, I have not tried this on my MacBook Pro.
- Bill Cobb
It works as advertised on the MacBook.
In both Safari and Chrome, I cannot drag and drop menu items to resequence them. When I try and select a single menu item using the drag and drop icon, the entire block of menu items is highlighted with a dark overlay. When I tap and hold a menu item away from the drag and drop icon, a small empty icon appears above the tap point and follows my finger around but initiates no action.
I can work around this for the time being by re-creating the menu items in their new sequence.
Please add this to your fix list, or help me understand how to use the drag and drop feature on the iPad Pro.
FYI, I have not tried this on my MacBook Pro.
- Bill Cobb
Correction - the dark overlay appears only when I 'grab' the drag and drop icon on the last menu item. When I 'grab' the icons for the other items, the empty bubble appears and follows my finger around. I was trying to move the last item (of 5 items) to the top of the list.
The menu is a single level menu, no sub-menu items.
- Bill
In both Safari and Chrome, I cannot drag and drop menu items to resequence them. When I try and select a single menu item using the drag and drop icon, the entire block of menu items is highlighted with a dark overlay. When I tap and hold a menu item away from the drag and drop icon, a small empty icon appears above the tap point and follows my finger around but initiates no action.
I can work around this for the time being by re-creating the menu items in their new sequence.
Please add this to your fix list, or help me understand how to use the drag and drop feature on the iPad Pro.
FYI, I have not tried this on my MacBook Pro.
- Bill Cobb
Guys, I just updated Backlight and Pages to v101 without a misstep in less than 5 minutes. My test site came back up just as I left it when I last worked on it. That is like a miracle after the Lightroom based process!
Good job -- I know the upgrade was a major job for you all, but it was worth every minute of your time and every penny I spent on the upgrade to be able to breeze through the upgrade like I just did.
My personal site is one or two CE4 releases back, and one of my client sites is still running CE3 due to the previous Lightroom based upgrade process. I now feel confident that once I finish my climb up the Backlight learning curve I'll be able to get all of my sites on Backlight and keep them current.
In addition to the wonderful upgrade process, I also really appreciate the auto refresh based training & testing approach Matt suggested in one of his posts. That is, 1) opening the site I am working on in one window of a browser & setting it to auto refresh, and 2) opening the Designer in a separate browser window, trying a new feature or changing a design parameter there, and watching it roll out in the site window. A major time saver both while learning and implementing.
Thanks again Matt and Ben. And also thanks to Rod ... the guy with too much time on his hands ... for being there for us when something does not go as we expect!!
- Bill
So if don't want the file name showing, use Title or Caption and supply a title or caption. I don't see a way to disable the file name showing when no metadata is used.
That was also a CE4 issue that I was never able to find a workaround for.