Finally! Site converted to Backlight

rod barbee · 2017-03-11 06:31:10

Since I've been testing and playing with Backlight for nearly a year, I figured it was well past time I converted my old CE4 site. So...finally...

I didn't change the design too much from my CE4 site. Just a few tweaks. Changed the default font to something a little more readable.
The site is using a custom footer via phplugins and custom css, just to add social media links mainly. Plus I included other customization from stuff that I've played around with on my test site, like a search page pop-up with searching tips.

My blog is still using the CE4 theme because I'm using several different page templates for specialty pages like my Articles and Newsletter pages and I can't figure out how to create additional page templates with the Backlight theme. (but I suspect Matt will be addressing that in some future update). I changed the CE4 theme design a bit to match the new Backlight navigation items, nav location and colors, and site font.

After the time spent getting the design and customization finished, converting the CE4 site to Backlight seemed like a non-event it was so easy. I have two top level galleries on my site and the CE4 => Backlight Publisher migration worked great.

The only small issue I had was that the site graphics I'd uploaded in my development site via the Backlight uploader didn't come along for the ride. This wasn't unexpected as it's happened occasionally in some tests I've run. Not a big deal, there were only three of them and it only took a couple of minutes to fix.

http://rodbarbee.com

dchew · 2017-03-12 06:08:40

Rod it looks wonderful. And the images even better!

I have to figure out how you did the album set template in your gallery. I like the small thumbnail on the left and the text, all surrounded by a larger box. That's very nice.

Great job.

Dave

Edit: Ahhh. Descriptive!

Last edited by dchew (2017-03-12 06:14:28)

Matthew · 2017-03-12 17:13:02

Nice, Rod.

I found one issue, though, on the search page. There's some orphaned text hanging out at the top of the page, on account of some HTML being injected into your page's title element:

<title><i class="fa fa-search"></i> Photo Search - Rod Barbee Photography</title>

You need to get that icon out of the page title.

markh · 2017-03-12 21:18:55

Really Nice. Lots of stuff in a compact design. I'm quite fond of the gradient to black in the background.
Regards Mark

rod barbee · 2017-03-12 22:03:59

Matthew wrote:

Nice, Rod.
I found one issue, though, on the search page. There's some orphaned text hanging out at the top of the page, on account of some HTML being injected into your page's title element:
<title><i class="fa fa-search"></i> Photo Search - Rod Barbee Photography</title>
You need to get that icon out of the page title.

Thanks Matt,
I though I'd squashed that. Probably forgot to save...
...and it pointed me to a couple of things I forgot to port over from my dev site. All good now. Until I find the next thing...

charlie.choc · 2017-03-13 00:26:49

Nice.

lofty · 2017-03-13 21:36:56

Very Nice Rod,

'bout time buddy

Last edited by lofty (2017-03-13 21:37:06)

rod barbee · 2017-03-13 22:05:15

SunFoxNC · 2017-03-15 01:55:02

Absolutely stunning images!

And I love the site design...clean, simple, and inviting.

trummonte · 2017-03-15 02:00:55

Looks great Rod! Someday I will get mine finished (only started on it back in the fall!).

rod barbee · 2017-03-15 02:37:06

I think we're all always working on getting our sites finished

SunFoxNC · 2017-03-15 03:07:16

Well, thanks to the efforts of Matthew and Ben (and certainly you for your tutorials that have saved me literally hours of reinventing the wheel!)...there's a darned good incentive to keep messing about with Backlight. The only real problem I have is that there are so many wonderfully done Backlight sites that make it difficult to decide which way I want to go with mine!

Speaking of which, one of the annual tasks I really tended to dread on sunfox.com was creating placeholder content for the new year's worth of photos. Prior to CE4 and Backlight, this was copying and pasting HTML templates and CSS files, updating all of the templates with the new copyright, and doing a lot of content housekeeping under the covers (and praying I didn't miss something in the process!). This was usually a 2-3 hour job and painful at best...

I just built the 2017 placeholders for four of the five sections of sunfox.com in about 20 minutes in Backlight Admin.

All I had to do was update the menu set for each section to point at the new album set for 2017 created by Publisher (don't have anything in it yet...got to work through the backlog!) and update the archive page to point to the old year's Publisher gallery, grab one thumbnail and upload it, and then add a new DIV for 2017 with the thumbnail filename and fix the location of the "row" CSS styles on the HTML that was built using the responsive grid framework.

And once I was done fiddling with each section, it was instantly available in production.

This would be reason #1723 that I have absolutely no desire to ever go back to hand-rolling HTML and exporting galleries out of the Web Module because the Backlight way is *WAY MORE AWESOME*!

Reason #1724 would be having a lot more time stroll down memory lane to select the images for the full-screen presentation for each section...

Panagon · 2017-03-15 12:32:34

Shucks, Rod you have taken away my last excuse to upgrade my stale C3 based website... love your new website, very nice work!
Questions:
1. Noticed that there are no Caption descriptions on your images. I thought you had them on your previous implantation? Would it possible to include captions?

2. Is your new website an “out-of-the-box” Backlight implementation? Specifically, did you use any kind of programming or other fancy footwork?

3. I basically would like to “duplicate” my current website:

http://franzzihlmannphoto.com/

Using Backlight and Pages (plus Wordpress for the Blog section) can I re-implement the same structure and similar look?

4. One of the big problems of my current website is the rendering on mobile devices, like iPad and iPhone. (I do not own these devices). Does a Backlight website work well on these devices?

5. I assume, because I am currently running C3, it will be a complete manual re-implantation?

Thanks for your help.

Matthew · 2017-03-15 14:24:03

rod barbee wrote:

I think we're all always working on getting our sites finished

You don't think I'll ever let you sit still, do you? One of the things I'm happiest about in Backlight is that it is so easy to try new things with your existing templates, or to make entirely new templates for existing content.

Matthew · 2017-03-15 14:25:38

@SunFoxNC, I'm glad to hear you're finding so much to love about Backlight. Every time we here stories such as yours, it further justifies our decision to break our work out of Lightroom's Web module.

rod barbee · 2017-03-15 14:32:59

Thanks Panagon!

1. Captions was an oversight on my part. I set it up in Backlight a bit different than my CE4 site and I just need to republish the albums. (Just the metadata, not the images). Thanks for catching that, it will give me something constructive to do in the morning.

2. No, the site is not out of the box. Plenty of custom css just to tweak a few design aspects (like the gradient background). PHPLUGINS to replace the standard Backlight footer with my own and some code to highlight the current page in the menu (if the current page is part of the menu).

3. You'll be able to come pretty close to duplicating your site. You won't be able to have a slideshow set to the left of the text like on your home page. At least not with the tools available.

4. I thought my CE4 site looked good on mobile. I think Backlight is even better.

5. Just as with all the CEx versions, you'll need to redesign. I did my redesign starting in my Backlight test site and then I created a development site in a subdomain where I worked out the kinks (except those things I missed. Like captions on large images....)

If you're using CE3 Publisher, Matt has mentioned that he'll make CE4 Publisher available so that you can migrate albums from CE3 to CE4. You need to be running CE4 Publisher to migrate Publisher created albums and album sets to Backlight. If you're not using Publisher, then you'll have to recreate all your galleries as albums. Not hard to do if you've got your galleries in Lightroom in collections.
I've got a blog post that outlines some ideas for that: http://ttg-tips-and-tricks.barbeephoto. … backlight/
It's based on moving a non-publisher controlled site from CE4 to Backlight but applies to CE3 as well.

Matthew · 2017-03-15 14:34:36

Panagon wrote:

Noticed that there are no Caption descriptions on your images. I thought you had them on your previous implantation? Would it possible to include captions?

I can't speak to Rod's reasons for including or excluding captions, but he could absolutely have them if he wanted them.

Panagon wrote:

I basically would like to "duplicate" my current website...

You can more or less do that, but I think you'll find a lot of new options that simply didn't exist before. This may inspire you to evolve the site to greater or lesser extent. But yes, you will be able to replicate a similar structure, have the same colors, etc.

Panagon wrote:

One of the big problems of my current website is the rendering on mobile devices, like iPad and iPhone...

CE3 predated the mobile Internet. We did shim some things into the plugins toward the end of their lifecycle to make them more mobile-friendly, but this was one of the major evolutions that necessitated CE4, a new system built from the ground up with mobile in mind.

Backlight takes this even further, is fully modern and responsive for screens of any and all sizes, and mobile/touch-screen use factors into development at every step of our process.

Panagon wrote:

I assume, because I am currently running C3, it will be a complete manual re-implantation?

If you want to, you can migrate from CE3 to CE4, then from CE4 to Backlight. On purchasing Backlight, I will be happy to supply you with the CE4 plugins to facilitate this, if that's what you want to do. Personally, I would just start from zero with a new site and embrace the opportunity to take a hard look at and to reevaluate my backlog of published images, maybe cull a bit to make room for new things. But that's me; I somethings like to wipe things away and begin with a clean slate.

Matthew · 2017-03-15 14:34:56

Oh, look ... Rod and I are typing at the same time. =P

rod barbee · 2017-03-15 14:36:34

pideja · 2017-03-15 21:41:45

Great looking site, Rod. An example for for us all...especially for me! If I only could get my head around Backlight. I guess in time it will come.

As for the photographs, they are absolutely stunning! Where do you find the time for these expeditions if you are bogged down with the likes of me asking all the questions...?

Great work.

rod barbee · 2017-03-15 23:52:05

Thanks! Wish I was taking more expeditions to photograph...

see if this helps to get your head around Backlight
http://ttg-tips-and-tricks.barbeephoto. … templates/

if not, be sure to post in the Backlight Support section.

Panagon · 2017-03-16 03:08:44

Rod and Matthew, thanks for your feedback. I will start experimenting with Backlight and I am sure I will have plenty of questions.....stay tuned...:) My current plan is to go straight from CE3 to Backlight.

Community @ The Turning Gate

#1 2017-03-11 06:31:10

Finally! Site converted to Backlight

#2 2017-03-12 06:08:40

Re: Finally! Site converted to Backlight

#3 2017-03-12 17:13:02

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#4 2017-03-12 21:18:55

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#5 2017-03-12 22:03:59

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#6 2017-03-13 00:26:49

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