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Hi!
First of all: I am amazed by the way BL works with Lightroom. Truely the missing link for all of us who would rather spend time shooting and enhancing photos then digging into code.
That said, I must admit I find the documentation rather concise and difficult to search as long as one is unfamiliar with the terms used.
For instance: certain settings seem only to be managed through templates, others directly in "the result of those templates" e.g. pages on the website.
How changing one affects the other is not easy to understand. Even for simple things like changing the background colour or image on a page, I have not been able to get what I want through trial-and-error.
Matthew's overview video is great, but far to lonely out there for the occasional user: the non-coding photographer who is stuck with the poor publishing part of Lightroom. Looking through the links in the Community posts I came along quite a number of sites that were unfinished or had dissappeared altogether so I hope that is not a bad sign.
More to the point where I am stuck now: how to customize my website with a header, a logo, a background picture or canvas, and what happens if I make changes to a template and I have made use of a previous version? Are those chnges "inhereted" or something.
I hope you can help.
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lots of questions there. I'll try to answer a few.
All pages in Backlight, whether regular pages (home, about, info, etc.), albums, or album sets derive their layout and styling via page templates.
On the Designer > Templates page you'll find all your templates. The top set are the page templates. The bottom sets are for album sets, albums, and WordPress themes.
The bottom three (album sets, albums, Wordpress Themes) all use, as their base, the Page Templates.
This way you can create one Page Template and use it for your album sets, albums, and WordPress theme and all those pages will have the same look.
So you first create a Pate Template.
Then create Album Set and Album templates. When you create Album Set and Album templates you'll need to choose a Page Template.
More to the point where I am stuck now: how to customize my website with a header, a logo, a background picture or canvas, and what happens if I make changes to a template and I have made use of a previous version? Are those chnges "inhereted" or something.
This depends. If you're referring to Backlight, then newer versions will inherit all your Page, Album Set, Album, and WordPress templates.
If you're referring to previous versions and meaning CE4 or other CE versions, then no, those are not inherited and you'll need to start from scratch.
Hope that helps. If you have more specific questions, be sure to post those under their own topics.
Rod
Just a user with way too much time on his hands.
www.rodbarbee.com
ttg-tips.com, Backlight 2/3 test site
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Hi Rod,
Thank you for this swift reply. The point where you elaborate on the template function is very helpful. I had no idea that there was to be an order in which to use them. The term album is confusing as it sometimes means a group of pictures, and sometimes the page where such a group is shown. Or am I wrong here.
No, I was not referring to any CE4 material, but talking within BL. Suppose I start of making a site with the default templates, all pages would derive their settings from them. Clear! However, when I change the template I used afterwards (!) and/or make a completely new template and assign that one as my default.... what happens with the pages already existing (based on the "previous" default).
Maybe, just maybe it would be a good idea if someone made a few drawings/illustrations of these relationships.
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The term album is confusing as it sometimes means a group of pictures, and sometimes the page where such a group is shown. Or am I wrong here.
An album is a collection of individual images. The term "gallery" also applies.
An album set is a collection of albums. So it's a page where you can access albums (galleries)
No, I was not referring to any CE4 material, but talking within BL. Suppose I start of making a site with the default templates, all pages would derive their settings from them. Clear! However, when I change the template I used afterwards (!) and/or make a completely new template and assign that one as my default.... what happens with the pages already existing (based on the "previous" default).
Maybe, just maybe it would be a good idea if someone made a few drawings/illustrations of these relationships.
The beauty of the template system is that you can change the look of your site at any time.
Say you create an album template (let's call it my-album-template-1) and you use a certain page template as it's base (my-page-template-1).
At any time you can create a new page template that looks totally different (my-page-template-2) and assign that page template to my-album-template-1 and instantly, all the albums you have that are created with my-album-template-1 will look completely different.
If you decide you don't like it, switch the my-album-template-1's page template back to my-page-template-1.
Just remember, Page Templates control the overall look of Album and Album Set templates. Things like masthead, navigation, typography.
The album and album set templates mainly control the behavior and layout of the actual albums or sets: grid layouts for example.
So it all starts with page templates. And that should be easy to remember because it's the very first thing you need to assign when creating an album or album set template. It's literally the first thing on the list.
And all this gets easier and much more intuitive the more you get into it.
Rod
Just a user with way too much time on his hands.
www.rodbarbee.com
ttg-tips.com, Backlight 2/3 test site
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Wow, that was fast.
Yes, I do very much hope things get easier, because what I saw on your test site makes me quite jealous.... I hope there will very soon be template files to share.
One thing was left over from my previous post: how to customize my website with a header, a logo, a background picture or canvas?
Using a template would make such changes appear on each and every page of my site, wouldn't it? So should I edit a page made from a template then, if I e.g. wanted to use a different backgroud (color/image) on each page?
I'm sorry but things are still confusing as "in the old TTG days" all such options were very clearly layed out within the Lightroom web module.
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I hope there will very soon be template files to share.
That capability is on its way with the upcoming 1.1 release!
One thing was left over from my previous post: how to customize my website with a header, a logo, a background picture or canvas?
Masthead logo:
Use the Backlight uploader and upload your logo
In the page template under Masthead, display the identity and choose the file you uploaded.
Background image/canvas:
That's the realm of custom css. For example, here's how to create a background gradient: http://community.theturninggate.net/vie … hp?id=6451
Using a template would make such changes appear on each and every page of my site, wouldn't it?
yes
So should I edit a page made from a template then, if I e.g. wanted to use a different backgroud (color/image) on each page?
No. You would need to create separate page templates, each using a different custom css file for each page that needs a different background, or, better yet, wait for the Backlight 1.1 release and use the new page-template and page-slug classes and then target individual pages from one css file.
I'm sorry but things are still confusing as "in the old TTG days" all such options were very clearly layed out within the Lightroom web module.
Background images for pages has been handled with custom css in TTG sites for a number of years now. Ever since CE came out anyway.
Rod
Just a user with way too much time on his hands.
www.rodbarbee.com
ttg-tips.com, Backlight 2/3 test site
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