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Hi Margo,
I've been working on a site too and had some of the same questions you've had. Rod is our hero!
I, too, have changed some albums from Theater to Galleria, for the same reasons as you. What I found is that it's best to double-click your album in LR and change the template there from Theater to Galleria. You can do it in Backlight, but I gather it's best done first in LR.
I hope I'm right and that this helps. Rod will confirm no doubt.
John
Oh Rod....
I'd call you a genius, but you'd just tell me I'm exaggerating!
1) Clearing the browser cache did it. (Now why didn't I think of that? !!!!)
2) Well, at least I'm not missing something.
I'm really liking Galleria with the thumbnail pallet and the caption turned on. So elegant.
Onward... and thank you...
John
Hi again....
1) I'm doing some tweaks to my site and have a test page I'm working with that isn't on the site menu:
http://www.johnblaustein.com/galleries/danube-galleria/
If you click on the Thumbnail button (top right), you will see that the vertical thumbs are sharp, but the horizontal ones are not. Why? I've tried all I can think of and can't solve this one. I am refreshing the browser with auto-refresh and highlighting the URL and pressing return.
In my Design Templates > Album Settings > Renditions, I have Thumb width & height set to 350px.
In my Design Templates > Album Settings > Presentation, I have Thumb set to Pallet, no crop, width=300, height=200. I've tried other combinations with no luck.
After making any change to these settings, I have gone back to LR Publish Services, right-clicked this album and selected Publish Now. That did not fix the issue. I then right-clicked and selected Mark To Republish and then clicked the Publish button in the upper right corner of the LR window. That did not fix it either. In Publish Options, I do NOT have the option checked for "Publish thumbnails without updating other renditions," but I also tried publishing with this option checked. No luck.
I must be missing something, but I don't know what.
2) On the subject of Publisher, is there any way to select one or more Albums or Album Sets in the Publisher pallet and right-click Publish Now to republish the full-size and thumbs for all the selected albums/sets at once? What I notice is that if I double-click TTG Publisher and then click Edit, I get a dialog asking if I want to Republish All. All that does is mark all albums to be republished, but it still requires selecting each one and clicking Publish in the upper right corner.
As always.... thank you...
John
Matt,
Good to know how the width settings work together.
My Galleria albums are all 1:1 and display just fine with no scrollbars on any device, whereas Theater albums do have scrollbars. Whether this is due to my width and ratio settings or because Galleria is more responsive, I don't know. In either case, I can work with both just fine and the site is looking good to me. I like how Galleria displays large images on all devices.
John
In my case, for all the Galleria galleries, the page content width is 1140, and the image rendition setting is also 1140 height and width. The Galleria presentation dialog doesn't have the max width option that the Theater does. Having 1140 match in the two dialogs is working well in terms of how the photos look on the page. I suspect you are right that page width overrules gallery width, but I haven't tested that.
I'd only use Theater/Vegas for auto-play galleries, so swiping isn't needed. That difference, however, is significant depending on ones needs.
At the end of the day, both types of galleries are really pretty to look at!! (Maybe a choice of transitions can be added to Galleria auto-play options at some point.)
John
Rod,
OK, I'm getting a better feel for how this is working.
Rendition size tells LR how big to make the images for uploading. Presentation sets max width and aspect ratio for the actual page display. I imagine the max width in Page Template "works with" max width in Album Template, but I'll have to experiment to see how the two settings work together.
I've now made two test files with the same images--Theater and Galleria--under the Commercial Work menu:
http://www.johnblaustein.com/galleries/danube/ (Theater, max width 960, 3:2, fit)
http://www.johnblaustein.com/galleries/danube2/ (Galleria, same settings as home page)
I love the Theater transitions, but I prefer the Galleria sizing and responsive sizing.
I think I now know my choices and will work with this.
John
Thanks, Rod.
I get what you are explaining. What puzzles me is why the Galleria albums scale just fine, but the Theater one doesn't. As you said in the other thread, however, they are "different beasts." Perhaps its that simple... they don't behave the same way.
Here's the test page: http://www.johnblaustein.com/galleries/danube/
I will experiment with different height settings and different aspect ratio settings and see if I can get Theater to work without scrollbars on all devices.
I note that Matt's demo--http://theturninggate.net/galleries/01-album-demonstrations/14-galleria-default/--uses all horizontal images. I can't do that, but perhaps Theater works better without having to deal with image orientation.
EDIT/UPDATE: I've tried just about every combination of image size and aspect ratio to try and get a Theater gallery that "mimics" the Galleria gallery in terms of image size on screen and responsiveness. It's not happening. I use aspect ratio of 1:1 so that horizontal and vertical images are equally large. As Matt points out in one of his videos, 1:1 works very well on portrait oriented devices, like iPhone.
By the way, in the Theater album settings, under Renditions, it seems that the photo width and height settings don't change anything. Is that right, or am I missing something?
John
Rod,
"You might want to keep your home page as is with an embedded album."
Yes, I am keeping my home page with its embedded Galleria album. In the Menu Set, I am pointing HOME to the PAGE and not the album. It's working fine. I've deleted all of the other pages that simply displayed the corresponding albums, and that's working fine too. Seeing that HOME is indexed stopped me from deleting it--as you suggested.
As for Galleria versus Theater, I started another thread per your suggestion (and I see you have responded). It's clear that they are indeed two "different beasts."
John
http://www.johnblaustein.com/galleries/danube/ (test page with Theater gallery)
The Theater slideshow on this page is not scaling properly on my laptop--1600x900 pixels. The scaling works fine on my desktop, iPhone and iPad. On the laptop, the images are too big and there is a vertical scrollbar. On all other devices there is no scrollbar. Please note that all other slideshows on the site are Galleria and have no scaling issues.
Thanks for any help.
John
Matt and Rod,
Thank you for the clarification. It's clear I haven't understood Backlight as well as I thought. Given the nature of my site, I can now delete ALL the pages I created for ALL of the albums. Even my Home page can point to my home album--no page needed. ((I'm afraid my mind is still stuck on the Muse approach. Not good.)
I'm still having trouble getting my Theater test page to resize/respond as well as the Galleria pages do, but I'll keep working at it.
Rod... sorry the thread has become so long. I will start a new topic if needed.
John
Hi guys....
1) I'm looking to add some more pages to the site. I'm thinking of using the Theater template instead of Galleria for some of the pages, and I'd like the slideshows to match in size. I'm having trouble getting that to happen.
Here are two current Galleria pages:
http://www.johnblaustein.com/galleries/home/
http://www.johnblaustein.com/galleries/ … cial-home/
Here is a TEST Theater page (TEMPORARILY in the Commercial Work menu):
http://www.johnblaustein.com/galleries/danube/
I've tried everything I can think of to get the Theater slideshow to match in size with the Galleria ones, but I'm striking out. ALL of the slideshow pages are using the same page template. Of course, they are not using the same Album template.
The Galleria template is set for Rendition > Width & Height = 1140; Presentation > Aspect 1:1. I've tried lots of settings for Theater, but none seem to match.
Any suggestions for Theater settings so that album will match the Galleria albums?
2) Menu question: For every album in my site, I have a separate page. When I am creating the menu items for each page that contains an album, I have the Link To set to Album and not Page. I note that Link To can point to either Album OR Page, and I'm wondering if pointing one way is better than the other? Or, do they work identically?
Thank you, as always.
John
I've used Adobe Muse for the last three years to develop and maintain my portfolio website. Since I don't make changes often, I find myself confused every time I revisit Muse. I've been using Matt's LR web plug-ins (free and paid) for years, and following TTG offerings for quite a while. Last week I decided that it was time to give Backlight a try.
I could not be happier with Backlight. From the day I installed it to the day my site was completed and online was a mere four days! That's a real tribute to Backlight's ease of use.
Here's the site: http://www.johnblaustein.com/
Many thanks to Matt and his team for a great product and wonderful support!!
UPDATE one month later: the ease with which I can edit and update the site with Backlight is amazing. I have added menu items and several galleries/albums since the site initially went live, all of this within just a few minutes.
John
THE SITE IS LIVE and working PERFECTLY! http://www.johnblaustein.com/
From installing Backlight last Friday to a completed site today (Tuesday) is a great tribute to Backlight's ease of use. It's day and night compared to having learned MS FrontPage, Adobe Dreamweaver and Muse in the past.
Many thanks, guys....
John
Rod and Matt,
Success! The site is completed...
http://bklight.johnblaustein.com
Rod.... your instructions for using and placing text and images worked perfectly:
http://bklight.johnblaustein.com/about/
http://bklight.johnblaustein.com/about-the-book/
In MarkdownPad2, I had trouble on the about-the-book page with: <img src=”path-to-image/your-image.jpg” width=”300″ class=”alignleft“>
I could either get the alignment correct or the size, but not both. I solved this by simply making the images the same width as the content area, but I'm curious why it didn't work. Any ideas?
I have a PayPal button on this page:
http://bklight.johnblaustein.com/buy-the-book/
The button works fine. However, depending on whether the user completes the transaction, or cancels, PayPal will return the user to one of two pages:
http://bklight.johnblaustein.com/cancel
http://bklight.johnblaustein.com/thank-you
Those pages are not in my menu (of course). It appears that they are in my root directory--http://bklight.johnblaustein.com--but I don't see them in FileZilla. I assume I can just point PayPal to these two links (cancel and thank-you), but I'm curious why the two pages don't show up when I view the root directory.
Before making the site live, I want to tweak the gallery image selections. When the time comes to go live, I assume that all I do is empty the current /public_html folder, including .htaccess and php.ini files, and then copy what is now in my Backlight sub-domain to the live folder (/public_html). Is that correct?
John
Rod....
UGH! It's all so easy..... you just need to know how to do it.
Image now centered. Galleria now set Outside. All working perfectly.
MarkdownPad2 is very cool. I'm creating the text there and simply using the Edit > Copy Document as HTML and pasting into BL. So easy. I had a bit of trouble figuring out how to insert line feeds, but Google answered that--two or more spaces at the end of the line, then press Enter.
I think I now have all the tools I need to finish up the site. I'll take advantage of your online instructions for including inline images for my About page so that I don't have to use a 3-column layout. I'm not wild about how that works on mobile with the pallets (but that's just personal preference).
I have to tell you, I've been looking at Backlight for a long time, and I was concerned that it would not offer enough design flexibility. Now that I'm using it, I find it to be truly remarkable.
If I may repeat myself..... THANK YOU!
John
Hi Matt,
Thanks for your comments.
I understand the "arrow issue." I see the need for them, and your color controls offer ample choices to make them very usable for all users.
"?autoRefresh" -- got it! I'm keeping the footer just to separate all page content from the bottom of the browser. It looks more elegant to me.
I've downloaded MarkdownPad2 and it's working well on the text. For example:
http://bklight.johnblaustein.com/about-the-book/
I can't figure out how to center the image, but I'll work on that. I also need to address gallery controls when viewing on my iPhone 6s--they slightly overlap the image. It's not bad, but I'd prefer a couple of pixels between the controls and the image
I am loving Backlight! When you consider that I installed it on Friday and that my new site is almost complete three days later, that says a lot about "ease of use." Without your and Rod's help, however, I wouldn't be this far along.
I am of course aware of the BL DOC file--http://backlight.theturninggate.net/docs/doku.php. It would be very helpful for a more detailed document that describes every single setting and slider! I know that's a lot of work on your part, but it would eliminate a lot of questions.
Best,
John
Yes, I can see that using the Margin-top (and Border-top/bottom too?) will keep the page contents away from the bottom of the browser window. With Pallet/Copyright off, however, Backlight's auto-refresh button doesn't display, and that's very handy! <g> Since setting the copyright text color to match the page background color is working to hide the text, I will leave that for now.
By the way, I solved my "arrow issue" on the Home page by making the arrow color match the page color. No arrows, but not needed with auto-play. (I tried Theater on the home page with no luck. Galleria is just right.)
Still much to work out, but I'm having fun and it is all SO much easier than my previous experiences with Microsoft FrontPage, Dreamweaver and Muse.
John
Thanks for the quick reply.
1) I want the footer because it adds a margin, just not the copyright text. I will leave the text color set to the background color and then it is invisible.
2) Logo: I will try a smaller image.
3) Mobile menu: I will set the vertical menu items. The quotation marks fixed the photo! For text formatting, I have Dreamweaver and can create the HTML there. Or I'll download that Markdown app.
5) After posting my question about the arrows, I figured out how to set that transparency to 0. I can live with the small white arrows.
6) Favicon.... got it.
THANK YOU!
John
Rod,
With your help yesterday, I'm off to a great start with Backlight. Thank you!
http://bklight.johnblaustein.com/home/ (Click the "Commercial Work" link for two slideshows.)
I've run into a few snags, in spite of having read your entire Tips page and the Tips section in the forum.
1) How to remove the copyright notice from the footer, other than make the text color match the background color (which is what I've done)? Deleting the copyright text from the Footer section of Page Design does not remove it.
2) On my iPhone, my site logo is centered, not right justified. Why? Do I need to use a smaller image file in Secondary Masthead section?
3) The "About" page is 3 columns, and displays oddly on the iPhone and iPad--two hamburger menu buttons to show the side columns. On this page, the menu changes from right to left side. I'm OK with the two side panels needing the menu button to display, but can the menu stay under the right menu button as it does on all 1-column pages?
http://bklight.johnblaustein.com/about/
4) When entering text, how to enter a list? Carriage returns are being ignored. How to add extra spaces between lines. See "About" page.
I am trying to make my Backlight "About" page match my current site:
http://bklight.johnblaustein.com/about/
http://www.johnblaustein.com/about.html
As you'll see, I've embedded a photo plus text in the left column, using this format pasted into the text box:
<img src=”http://www.johnblaustein.com/images/jb-gc2015-0036.jpg” width=”300″ class=”alignleft“>
Test1
Test2
Test3
The photo does not display, and the text does not display as a list. It displays as: Test1 Test2 Test3
Also, the client list on the right should be single spaced (no blank space between items). When I paste the list in as single spaces, all text runs together, like Test1 Test2 Test3.
Also on the "About" page, in the center column, I've entered several carriage returns to "push" some of the text lower, but the extra spaces are being ignored. How can I add extra line spaces?
On the subject of embedding, to add a PayPal button, do I simple paste the HTML from PayPal's site into one of the Page Copy text boxes?
5) How to add a Favicon?
I've really tried to find the answers on my own, so I'll be very grateful for your continued help. Thank you!
John
Yep, I've watched Matt's video several times and am aware of Tips & Tricks and your site.
By the way, this link isn't working--in the readme file within the Galleria ZIP:
http://backlight.theturninggate.net/doc … stallation
The corresponding link in the Theater folder readme worked, so I figured out where to install Galleria.
Thanks again....
John
Got it!
I just purchased Backlight+Pages+Galleria+Theater. I will install it and get started. With a little luck, you won't hear from me for a while. <g>
Your help and quick responses are much appreciated!
John
Great. Now it's time for me to buy BL, install it, and dive in.
Getting back to my question about publishing my 8 galleries all at once, if I install BL, set the initial gallery that's created in the installation to accept Descendants, then upload my 8 galleries, will I be able to reorganize which galleries go in which menu set? Or, would I be better off creating my menu structure first and only publish the galleries once the various menus are in place?
I was thinking I'd use the Galleria module for my galleries, but I'll look at Theater. I'm happy to buy them both and experiment.
I managed to learn Dreamweaver and then Muse--even though it was tough going--and this MUST be much simpler once I get into it.
Many thanks for your time!
OK, I understand that.
However, I am hoping to have two galleries pages, similar to my current website:
http://www.johnblaustein.com/index.html
I am hoping Backlight will allow me to have the equivalent of the "Commercial Work" and "Hidden Canyon" links in my menu bar. I don't need the sub-menus on the left side of those two pages as I now have them. Those can be in the dropdowns from "Commercial Work" and "Hidden Canyon."
To confirm: Can I have more than one menu item that each points to different galleries? (I assume so.)
Rod,
Thank you.
1) OK on PayPal button. I am pleased to know that I can simply insert the HTML from PayPal to display the button as I currently do. I prefer not to use a Cart, and now I know that's possible.
2) I appreciate the explanation of Voyager and using the same catalog on two computers, but I won't need that. I would just like to work on the design elements on the laptop once the albums are on the server in my sub-domain.
I think I need to just install Backlight and dive in, but I tend to try and understand new software before making the leap. With that in mind, one more question for now:
In LR, I have collections for each of my 8 galleries. Once I have Backlight installed into my sub-domain, can I start by using LR Publisher to upload all 8 galleries to the server, or do I have to create the pages and/or menu items in BL before publishing each gallery?
John
Matthew,
I am reading everything I can find about how to set up and use Backlight. Between the documentation, Rod's site and YouTube, I'm getting a good sense of how to proceed.
2 questions:
1) I know I can use your Cart system in order to take PayPal payments, but my needs are very simple since I only sell one product on my site. Will Backlight allow me to insert a PayPal button as I have done on my current site? For example, see the button at the bottom of this page:
http://www.johnblaustein.com/buy-the-book.html
2) I use two PCs, a desktop on which I work with Lightroom, and a laptop. If I do all of my album creation on the desktop and publish them to Backlight from the desktop, will I be able to work on my site on the laptop? If I understand Backlight correctly, once it is installed on the server--I will install it into a sub-domain--and once the albums are uploaded to the server, then I can log onto the site using a browser on any computer. Other than the LR publisher plug-in, all Backlight files reside on the server. Is this all correct?
Thank you.
John