Work in progress and a learning experience

pwpphoto · 2016-05-19 08:46:42

I will admit that after CE4 and my dislike of the product I was not onboard purchasing Backlight. However I did jump in at the beginning and I must say I do like the product after working with it. It does require some additional coding and digging through the missing manual (sorry Matthew and Ben had to get that dig in) but with the help of the larger TTG community and my hunting and pecking at different options I think I have found what I'm looking for.

I don't have much setup yet in the way of images but I do have two top level galleries setup, the PWP gallery has mostly album sets with custom thumbnails (some need to be updated after the changes I made today) but the ASF gallery has some images so you can see the layout and style I'm using throughout the site.

I think this is a classier design that what I have had in the past and what I started out with designing in Backlight. It's still a work in progress but please take a look and let me know what you think. I need to say thank you to all of you who have posted tips on the forums and answered my numerous questions as I used a lot of the information found in those posts to get to this point.

http://www.pwpphoto.com/

Last edited by pwpphoto (2016-05-19 08:51:20)

Matthew · 2016-05-19 09:15:50

The site looks nice.

I think it's inaccurate to say that additional coding is "required" -- it's needed only if you want to do specific things that Backlight does not yet allow. So I'm curious, specifically what did you have to code yourself? From the looks of it, background-image and putting the search field on the page; anything else?

pwpphoto · 2016-05-19 09:41:23

Matthew,

I didn't mean to imply that you must do additional coding and your correct you don't have to do any additional coding if your happy with the stock options that the product currently comes with. To add images to the pages you now need to code that into the page copy where in CE3 & CE4 it was part of the product for example. I haven't done any web coding in years so little stuff like that requires me to dust off the little gray cells to dig up the old school methods then research how to do it correctly in the modern times.

I really like the product and recommend it. It is much easier and faster to use than CE3 or CE4 it's also easy to setup different versions of your site so that if you wanted to change the look every couple of months you could do so in a matter of minutes or hours instead of days.

I added the search field and did some css stuff for the background, menus and images everything basically came from the forums. I took the examples tested them and then started modifying them to use on the site. I haven't done a lot of css changes but did have to do the ones I did, to get the look that I wanted. I was able to reduce some of the css after I figured out the use of the alpha channels in some of the settings. Once I learn more about the product and what it can really do, I may be able to remove some of the custom css I used as it might already be an option that I haven't figured out yet.

Backlight is a great product and will only get better after you start adding additional features and I bet you'll even start adding some of the extra stuff your users come up with that enhance the product.

At least you didn't mind the manual dig.

Last edited by pwpphoto (2016-05-19 09:54:02)

Matthew · 2016-05-19 10:17:09

I've previously, publicly described the documentation as sparse. We'd like to expand on it at some point, but we're presently focused on feature development and on making Backlight more intuitive to use, rather than documented unintuitive processes. We'd like for people to spend their time in the application, not reading about it. To that end, things aren't perfect and probably never will be, but I think we're a hell of a lot closer to it than we were with the Lightroom plugins.

gary_in_austin · 2016-05-19 12:01:57

I'll agree. I've used CE2 CE3 and CE4. Backlight is awesome and I'm sure Matt and Ben will be making some helpful additions. Thanks, Rod, also. The CE versions were powerful but I stopped publishing 6 months ago because it was a pain. I love Backlight, though. I'm going to wait for updates and things to move over from CE4.

Thanks, everybody for your hard work. And thanks to the support community for asking questions and developers and testers for specific issues. I'm more happy with Backlight than CE2, CE3, CE4. Even though all the features like "Stage" that I used for html 5 video are not there, yet. I hope they will be soon. Nice job, everyone -especially Matthew, Ben and Rod.

Last edited by gary_in_austin (2016-05-19 12:03:29)

admint · 2016-09-13 23:22:45

pwpphoto wrote:

It does require some additional coding and digging through the missing manual

Sorry but I have to agree with pwpphoto on the additional coding, as well as the somewhat vague manual for Backlight.

- How do you add a background image?

- How do I create a boarder around my images in galleries? Specifically the large image page.

- How do I edit the existing CSS? Or how/where do I use/install a custom CSS file, or add code to the existing CSS file?

Don't get me wrong, I like the way Backlight works, specifically the speed at which changes are applied. But coming from CE3, I thought it had way better customization and options. Seems to me if you want some of the features I asked about, you need to do custom coding.

Just my quick observations of Backlight. BTW I bought Backlight + Pages, plus Theatre.

Anyway I'm still trying to learn Backlight, but I do miss the amount of customization CE3 had without additional coding. That said I will be asking lots of questions until I get my head wrapped around Backlights customization features.

Thanks.

rod barbee · 2016-09-14 00:06:33

- How do you add a background image?

Custom css. Several people have done it and you can probably find references by searching the forum.
for example: http://community.theturninggate.net/vie … hp?id=6920

- How do I create a boarder around my images in galleries? Specifically the large image page.

Custom css: http://community.theturninggate.net/vie … hp?id=6373
(Matt doesn't like it, but it's been working for me)

- How do I edit the existing CSS? Or how/where do I use/install a custom CSS file, or add code to the existing CSS file?

create a css file, upload it to /backlight/custom/css
in your page template under Advanced Customization, enable custom css and choose the file you uploaded.
http://ttg-tips-and-tricks.barbeephoto. … backlight/

admint · 2016-09-14 00:50:28

Thank you. Will give it a try. Still have more questions, but will post when needed.

Edit: Yeah, I see the warning by Matt about photoswipe. I don't know...

Edit 2: Borders is working just fine for me in photoswipe. Even shows up on my cell phone.

Thanks.

Last edited by admint (2016-09-17 11:18:09)

Community @ The Turning Gate

#1 2016-05-19 08:46:42

Work in progress and a learning experience

#2 2016-05-19 09:15:50

Re: Work in progress and a learning experience

#3 2016-05-19 09:41:23

Re: Work in progress and a learning experience

#4 2016-05-19 10:17:09

Re: Work in progress and a learning experience

#5 2016-05-19 12:01:57

Re: Work in progress and a learning experience

#6 2016-09-13 23:22:45

Re: Work in progress and a learning experience

#7 2016-09-14 00:06:33

Re: Work in progress and a learning experience

#8 2016-09-14 00:50:28

Re: Work in progress and a learning experience

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