Publisher: from CE4 to Backlight

aebolzan · 2016-05-07 01:55:20

I have installed backlight yesterday in a subdomain in order to play with it before removing my actual site (made with CE4) and replaced it with the new backlight version. Up to now, I can say that backlight is amazing and so easy to use that I love it!....no more long times within Lightroom to create or modify each page or gallery!......but I have two questions:

a) what about Publisher?.....If I install the new version of Publisher in LR, will it be possible to still manage my CE4 site?. What about the albums that I created in LR for CE4?. I find no clear indication about this. Is it possible to install the new Publisher and manage both CE4 and Backlight albums? Or should I have both versions of Publisher?...or.......

b) My current site uses Stage for the entrance page and from the first page one can select either English or Spanish for entering in the site (I have three instances of ttg-be, one at the root level, and the two others at the [english] and [spanish] subdirectories (see www.agustinbolzan.com.ar). I know that the Stage instance is not available at this moment, but at least I would like to know how to proceed with Backlight in order to reproduce my bilingual site.

Agustin

rod barbee · 2016-05-07 02:04:24

a) what about Publisher?.....If I install the new version of Publisher in LR, will it be possible to still manage my CE4 site?

Yes. I'm doing so now. Your CE4 albums won't be changed by Backlight unless and until you migrate them to Backlight control.

I find no clear indication about this. Is it possible to install the new Publisher and manage both CE4 and Backlight albums? Or should I have both versions of Publisher?...or.......

When you install the Backlight version of the Publisher plug-in, it will take over for the CE4 version and you will no longer see TTG CE4 Publisher in the Publisher Services. It will just be TTG Publisher. But it can manage CE4 albums and sets.

b) My current site uses Stage for the entrance page and from the first page one can select either English or Spanish for entering in the site (I have three instances of ttg-be, one at the root level, and the two others at the [english] and [spanish] subdirectories (see www.agustinbolzan.com.ar). I know that the Stage instance is not available at this moment, but at least I would like to know how to proceed with Backlight in order to reproduce my bilingual site.

That will take some thinking....

One possibility is keeping your Stage entrance page intact and installing Backight on two sub-domains (or in your case, the two sub-directories, just like you've done with ttg-be). One for English, one for Spanish. And have your entrance page link to both.

You'll then be able to migrate your CE4 albums to Backlight control when you're ready to. I believe Matt and Ben have advised against managing with both Backlight and CE4 in the same top-level gallery folder though.

aebolzan · 2016-05-07 03:13:27

rod barbee wrote:

When you install the Backlight version of the Publisher plug-in, it will take over for the CE4 version and you will no longer see TTG CE4 Publisher in the Publisher Services. It will just be TTG Publisher. But it can manage CE4 albums and sets.

This means that the albums that I created with CE4 will still be there and then I have to create new albums for Backlight and both types will work fine together, right?

One possibility is keeping your Stage entrance page intact and installing Backight on two sub-domains (or in your case, the two sub-directories, just like you've done with ttg-be). One for English, one for Spanish. And have your entrance page link to both.
You'll then be able to migrate your CE4 albums to Backlight control when you're ready to. I believe Matt and Ben have advised against managing with both Backlight and CE4 in the same top-level gallery folder though.

If I understand correctly, I have to install one instance of backlight for each language instance, like I did with tt-be, right?, and create albums for each instance (as I did for CE4).....

rod barbee · 2016-05-07 03:20:55

This means that the albums that I created with CE4 will still be there and then I have to create new albums for Backlight and both types will work fine together, right?

I don't think that CE4 albums and Backlight albums should be alongside each other (in the same top level galleries folder hierarchy. Like I said, I believe Matt and Ben have advised against this.
However, you can migrate your existing CE4 Gallery based albums to Backlight albums and apply a Backlight template to them. And then start creating new albums.
http://backlight.theturninggate.net/doc … _backlight

If I understand correctly, I have to install one instance of backlight for each language instance, like I did with tt-be, right?, and create albums for each instance (as I did for CE4).....

That's what I'm thinking.

aebolzan · 2016-05-07 05:05:24

rod barbee wrote:

I don't think that CE4 albums and Backlight albums should be alongside each other (in the same top level galleries folder hierarchy. Like I said, I believe Matt and Ben have advised against this.
However, you can migrate your existing CE4 Gallery based albums to Backlight albums and apply a Backlight template to them. And then start creating new albums.
http://backlight.theturninggate.net/doc … _backlight

So, I deduce that it would be advisable to play and build the site with Backligth as I am doing in the subdomain without creating albums while I am still maintaining the CE4 site (with the CE4 Publisher in LR), and once I decide to move the site to Backligth, install the new Publisher, migrate the galleries and remove the remaining CE4 site parts, and go forth with a plain Backligth site....

Agustin

rod barbee · 2016-05-07 05:17:32

You will need to install the new Publisher to play with Backlight. This will not affect your CE4 albums; the new version of Publisher can manage those just as the CE4 Publisher is right now. So don't worry about installing the new Publisher.

Here's my plan, if it helps:
http://community.theturninggate.net/vie … 946#p36946

SunFoxNC · 2016-05-09 00:12:47

A couple of things I noticed in my installation of the new Backlight publisher plugin:

When I installed it in the same directory I had installed the CE4 plugin (Lightroom's main directory), Lightroom plugin manager would see both plugins and activate them but only one would be offered in the droplist when it came time to actually create a new instance to talk to my local test installation of Backlight.

I was a bit confused as to which version of the publisher plugin that was being picked up (not knowing at this point that the new publisher can manage the existing CE4 albums/album sets as well as the new Backlight ones).

I ended up moving the Backlight publisher plugin to the roaming profile and when I got back to Lightroom's plugin manager, both plugins were still listed but now the Backlight pubilsher was enabled and the CE4 publisher was disabled.

At this point, I went ahead and created a new publishing service using the Backlight publisher and was able to publish a new gallery to the Backlight site. I then tested Backlight's publisher against one of my existing CE4 galleries and it worked seamlessly there as well.

Then I searched the forum and found this thread (my apologies...typical programmer behaviour, play with the new toy first and then read the docs!).

Would it have been better for me to down Lightroom, delete the existing plugin and copy over the new publisher plugin and then restart Lightroom? I didn't test that scenario and I'm probably not going to now that I have a working config but figured it might be something you want to know. The existing services were able to identify the Backlight publisher plugin and use it (making me wonder if it has the same ID under the covers).

(The important thing was that I was able to very quickly get a Backlight test site running so I can kick the tires...I've not had a chance to play with the Designer but out of the box, Backlight+Pages is already much more responsive and easy to use. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to create and manage about ten CE4 sites this past year or so and loved how it was so configurable and with Publisher very easy to maintain the care and feeding of these sites...but yes...I was so over the delays in rendering changes in the Web module that were still there even with a new computer that is 7-8 faster than the first one I was using for CE4. Well done, guys!

Matthew · 2016-05-09 00:30:14

Backlight's publisher replaces CE4 Publisher, and can be used to manage both CE4 and Backlight albums. That's really all there is to it. You can duplicate the publisher instance to serve separate CE4 and Backlight installs, and can then migrate your albums from CE4 to Backlight in accordance with our documentation.

Community @ The Turning Gate

#1 2016-05-07 01:55:20

Publisher: from CE4 to Backlight

#2 2016-05-07 02:04:24

Re: Publisher: from CE4 to Backlight

#3 2016-05-07 03:13:27

Re: Publisher: from CE4 to Backlight

#4 2016-05-07 03:20:55

Re: Publisher: from CE4 to Backlight

#5 2016-05-07 05:05:24

Re: Publisher: from CE4 to Backlight

#6 2016-05-07 05:17:32

Re: Publisher: from CE4 to Backlight

#7 2016-05-09 00:12:47

Re: Publisher: from CE4 to Backlight

#8 2016-05-09 00:30:14

Re: Publisher: from CE4 to Backlight

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