AutoIndex Enabler functionality?

SunFoxNC · 2016-06-30 02:07:09

(My apologies for the stream of consciousness you're about to see here...I'm trying to think through the various options to allow me to upgrade a huge site with legacy content from CE4 to Backlight. With that in mind...)

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Just out of curiosity, how would one go about getting AutoIndex Enabler (which is essentially autoindex.xml and a thumbnail with support for links in autoindex.xml itself) sort of functionality in Backlight+Pages?

The reason I ask this is that last year when I re-positioned the various top-level folders of www.sunfox.com into constituent sub-domains (each with an installation of CE4 and a CE4 publisher pointing to it), I used AutoIndex Enabler to provide a link to the sub-domain and a custom thumbnail from the main page which was an AutoIndex template.

Within each of the sub-domain sites, AutoIndex and Enabler was used to provide links in the main gallery to the original HTML for gallery years 2003-2015 with the various publisher instances handling 2016 and beyond as a compromise from having to rebuild the entire site which sports over 127K images across its various sites.

Here is a sample filesystem layout for family.sunfox.com:

www.sunfox.com
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+---- 0001_family.sunfox.com/ (AutoIndex Enabler directory/link for family.sunfox.com)
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+---- index.php (Top-level iconic auto index for Enabler directories)
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+---- family/ (family.sunfox.com)
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+---- galleries/ (CE4 publisher for family.sunfox.com pointing here)
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+---- images/ (2015 and earlier images live here)
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+---- ttg-be/ (CE4 installation)
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+---- 20XXindex.html (2015 and earlier links pages)
|
+---- galleries.php (Sub-domain iconic auto index)

The other subdomains (nicholas, alexander, kathryn, and williams) are done in the same fashion.

With the advent of Backlight, I've come to the conclusion that what I thought was a clever compromise to try to make each sub-domain autonomous and avoid a complete tear-down and rebuild of the content has turned out in fact to be an own goal.

So I've come to the conclusion that when it comes time to cut sunfox.com over to a pure Backlight solution, what I'd like to do is have one Backlight+Pages instance in the root controlling galleries in the various sub-domain sites but still maintain the older standalone content as-is.

I know I won't be able to take advantage of migrating each CE4 sub-domain's published galleries and databases to Backlight and I'm OK with taking my medicine for trying to be too clever by half! I'm also OK with multiple publisher instances to manage galleries for the various sub-domains as that's what I have right now (i.e. I know no single uber-Publisher would be able to maintain the published content as well as the legacy content).

But I rather liked the AutoIndex Enabler behaviour as it allowed me to order the albums explicitly in a way that Lightroom wouldn't easily support and allowed me to maintain the 2015 and earlier content as-is as it's just too massive an undertaking to convert all of that stuff from the much older HTML templates they use to Backlight.

One solution absent Enabler functionality would be to create a new Page instance and menu item for the legacy content and drop in the HTML to simulate the iconic auto index and let publisher manage the real galleries folder.

Another would be a menu for accessing the links to the legacy HTML pages but then I'd lose the iconic thumbnails I thought made it look much better than just a drop menu which is how the previous HTML handled the earlier content.

Are there any other options that you can suggest that I might consider?

Thanks!

rod barbee · 2016-06-30 07:43:58

autoindex and autoindex.xml are not part of Backlight. All the "autoindexing" functions are now handled by the database.
So there is no Autoindex Enabler available or needed for Backlight.

How about managing each person's site in their own Backight controlled sub-domain (and a Publisher instance for each)?

for your entry index page (the one that is now an Autoindex in your CE4 site), you could just use html in the copy area and create links to each of the sub-domains.

If I were doing it, I'd use the TTG Responsive Grid Framework, using an image with text beneath in each "cell". You can lay it out just about any way you want, and it's responsive, meaning the columns will stack on mobile devices.

SunFoxNC · 2016-07-01 04:44:54

I already had CE4 installed and managing each of the sub-domain sites on sunfox.com (except for williams.sunfox.com which is my Backlight test site) and what I was hoping to achieve was one Backlight installation at the root of sunfox.com to essentially rule all the sub-domain sites so that I can define the configuration and templates globally (and make updates easier so that I only have to update one installation rather than five).

I was able to create a test instance of Publisher and point the top-level directories parameter at an arbitrarily deep relative path from the root and then create the path manually with the FTP client so Publisher has a valid location to push the album sets/albums.

But poking round in the Backlight admin, it doesn't seem like I'm able to create a new page at an arbitrary folder depth/location from the root of the Backlight installation (i.e. the page creation doesn't have a top-level directory parameter analogue to the Publisher configuration option).

Also, the current CE4 implementation is able to combine the links published galleries with the links I put into the galleries directory using AutoIndex Enabler...without Enabler in Backlight, I would have to split the Backlight managed galleries (which are based on calendar years) from the legacy content and provide two menu links (one to the Backlight-managed galleries, the other to the index page based on the TTG responsive framework Rod has suggested).

So the legacy content I want to preserve seems to rule out the idea of "one Backlight to bring them in and in the darkness bind them!"

I could try to force the "one Backlight" strategy anyway but the more I've thought about it, the downside of essentially ditching the Pages and templating framework except at the root is much much worse than setting up and maintaining multiple Backlight installations for the sub-domains. The whole point of going to CE4 and Backlight was to have a lot less work once the templates were designed and in play...the previous two iterations of this site were custom HTML that I definitely wanted to leave in the past!

Now that I'm committed to the multiple Backlight strategy (at least for this domain!), I might go ahead and make the root a simple Backlight installation in its own right with the index page to the sub-domains so that I might be able to take advantage of the full-screen slideshow when Stage functionality arrives in Backlight (I know there have been some CE4/Backlight hybrids done out there but I'm willing to wait for that functionality).

rod barbee · 2016-07-01 04:54:09

But poking round in the Backlight admin, it doesn't seem like I'm able to create a new page at an arbitrary folder depth/location from the root of the Backlight installation

In this respect, Backlight page creation is much like WordPress.

I was hoping to achieve was one Backlight installation at the root of sunfox.com to essentially rule all the sub-domain sites so that I can define the configuration and templates globally

Backlight needs to be installed in each domain/sub-domain. It's not able to do a multi-site configuration like WordPress can. Then again, WordPress is much more complicated.

Community @ The Turning Gate

#1 2016-06-30 02:07:09

AutoIndex Enabler functionality?

#2 2016-06-30 07:43:58

Re: AutoIndex Enabler functionality?

#3 2016-07-01 04:44:54

Re: AutoIndex Enabler functionality?

#4 2016-07-01 04:54:09

Re: AutoIndex Enabler functionality?

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