Support community for TTG plugins and products.
NOTICE
The Turning Gate's Community has moved to a new home, at https://discourse.theturninggate.net.
This forum is now closed, and exists here as a read-only archive.
You are not logged in.
Pages: 1
I develop my website as follows
• I do all development locally on my Mac, using MAMP.
• I use the ttg_pallet_top_title PHPhplugin to place the logo and menu in the page__pallet__top div of the site.
• I use a single Page Template throughout currently. (Previously I used two templates, one of which was used for only the Galleries page.)
• The URL’s are set in the Designer to http://localhost:8888.
• The albums are configured to use a 3 column masonry slideshow.
• In Lightroom I have entries in the Title and Caption fields for each photo; I have placed metadata tokens for each photo in both Metadata One and Metadata Two in the Metadata Display of the Thumbnail Grid and in the Captions area of the Photo Presentation.
• When viewed on the Mac under MAMP, using the local host, http://localhost:8888, the site displays as expected - the site logo and menu appears in the top pallet.
• I synchronize the local site to my website (in a sub-domain) by first changing the URL settings to the address of the sub-domain and then uploading the local site to the website using Transit.
• When I do further editing locally, I generally change the URL settings back to the local host (but occasionally miss doing that and leave the online URL in the settings).
Earlier, the online site was a mirror of the local site, as expected. Not surprisingly, as I made occasional blunders while I “went up the learning curve” I ran into problems that I was able to correct, often by consulting postings on this site.
More recently I am running into significant problems. Although the local site correctly displays the logo and menu in the top pallet, the online site does not pick up the code in the PHPlugin file and the logo and menu do not appear. In addition, while metadata one and two usually appear in the local Thumbnail Grid, they are sometimes missing from the online site. Recently, the metadata is missing from most, but not all, of the online Photo Presentations.
I have tried a number of approaches to solve out the problem:
• frequent clearing of the template cache;
• doing development sometimes using the local URL and alternately the online URL;
• adding code to the PHPlugin file to add a menu item - it appears as expected locally but is not picked up online after syncing;
• created an additional album locally and then sync’ed online - no success.
• I re-installed Backlight “just in case” the code had been corrupted.
I continue to have the problems.
I am perplexed and wonder what I am doing incorrectly. In a word - help - please. I apologize for the long-winded background - I thought that it would be relevant to someone trying to understand where I have gone wrong.
Thanks very much in advance for any help. Is access to my site required and if so where should I send the logon info?
Barry
PS - A question - I am not clear whether it is even necessary to use FTP (Transit) in the development process. I prefer to do the development locally and then upload by FTP - is that advisable or to be avoided?
Offline
Hard to tell what’s going on just from a description. Can you post a link to the site?
Just my own perspective, but it seems that you’re introducing unnecessary complications by needing to sync from your local site to the live site.
I find it easier to develop a site in a sub-domain and once I’m happy with design and customization I can copy the development site to the live site.
I usually keep he development site active for a while as a rest site.
Rod
Just a user with way too much time on his hands.
www.rodbarbee.com
ttg-tips.com, Backlight 2/3 test site
Offline
The sub-domain is http://backlight.fisherpix.ca/.
Offline
Could we also see a screen capture of what the masthead should look like?
Does your host use any sort of site caching? Is so, can you turn it off?
Rod
Just a user with way too much time on his hands.
www.rodbarbee.com
ttg-tips.com, Backlight 2/3 test site
Offline
looking at the source code of your Galleries page I can see that it's trying to load css from localhost
http://localhost:8888/backlight/publisher/resource.php?template=63&extension=css&name=styleyou could try updating the Album Files from the Publisher dashboard page in Backlight
Rod
Just a user with way too much time on his hands.
www.rodbarbee.com
ttg-tips.com, Backlight 2/3 test site
Offline
To answer your questions: I use 1and1.com for hosting. I do not use their content delivery network (CDN) option, which seems to use caching. I am not aware of any other caching by the host. I see the references to localhost in the live site that you have pointed out.
I now wonder whether I have been handling my website development inappropriately all along.
I initially configured the Publisher in Lightroom locally and set the API URL in both LR Publisher and in Backlight at http://localhost:8888/backlight/publisher/.
I did all development locally. When I wanted to update the live site I changed the URL in the Backlight settings from the local URL to the live URL and uploaded the site by FTP. (Admittedly I sometimes missed changing the URL between local/live - perhaps that caused some of the problems I now experience.)
That worked fine for a long time and it is only recently that I have been experiencing problems.
Should I abandon this approach and instead do all development on the live site?
If so, should I now change the API settings in both the LR Publisher and in the live Backlight settings? As I understand it, the API is arbitrary, so that I would simplify choose a new API key (are there any limitations?). Presumably, operating this way would be slower than developing locally.
I would presumably continue development in the subdomain. Once I am satisfied to shift away from the subdomain to the main site, should I copy the site content from the subdomain to the main domain by FTP? Would that be the only reason to use FTP in the future? Would I ever use the local site again, other than as a point in time backup?
In my initial post I mentioned that the metadata I enter in Lightroom does not always appear in the live site. I wonder if that is also a result of the way that I have been operating.
I have now uploaded my local site to a different subdomain by FTP (but have not yet changed the API settings) - bltest.fisherpix.ca. It is functioning as expected and the URL's shown are for the live site, not the local one.
Rod - thanks very much for your help.
Barry
Offline
I did all development locally. When I wanted to update the live site I changed the URL in the Backlight settings from the local URL to the live URL and uploaded the site by FTP. (Admittedly I sometimes missed changing the URL between local/live - perhaps that caused some of the problems I now experience.)
When you did that, did you also change the API URL in Lightroom?
Should I abandon this approach and instead do all development on the live site?
My personal opinion is that developing online would be easier and less confusing.
If so, should I now change the API settings in both the LR Publisher and in the live Backlight settings? As I understand it, the API is arbitrary, so that I would simplify choose a new API key (are there any limitations?). Presumably, operating this way would be slower than developing locally.
The API Key is arbitrary, but not the URL. That needs to match the url of the site (plus the /backlight/publisher/ part)
It's slower when it comes to creating albums. But you'll need to FTP those images to the site eventually so you don't really save any time in the long run. And it looks like it's now cost you some time.
Rod
Just a user with way too much time on his hands.
www.rodbarbee.com
ttg-tips.com, Backlight 2/3 test site
Offline
When you did that, did you also change the API URL in Lightroom?
No - I changed only the Backlight URL. I will change to the method you recommend.
How do I transfer from the sub-domain to the main domain? FTP?
Barry
Offline
You need to change the site url in Backlight to the new location and the API url in Lightroom to the new location.
You have two options for transferring the site to the main domain:
download the development site to your computer and then upload to the main site (via FTP). This has the advantage of leaving the development site intact for testing.
OR
Move the development site from the sub-domain folder to the main domain (public_html) via FTP. This empties the sub-domain folder of your backlight files.
I've found that sometimes images uploaded using the Backlight uploaded don't quite make it for the ride and I have to re-upload and re-assign them. Not a big deal.
Rod
Just a user with way too much time on his hands.
www.rodbarbee.com
ttg-tips.com, Backlight 2/3 test site
Offline
You need to change the site url in Backlight to the new location and the API url in Lightroom to the new location.
You have two options for transferring the site to the main domain:
download the development site to your computer and then upload to the main site (via FTP). This has the advantage of leaving the development site intact for testing.
OR
Move the development site from the sub-domain folder to the main domain (public_html) via FTP. This empties the sub-domain folder of your backlight files.
I've found that sometimes images uploaded using the Backlight uploaded don't quite make it for the ride and I have to re-upload and re-assign them. Not a big deal.
I'll add a third one: get ssh access to your host and then you can do a simple copy of the directory (cp -r src dest). But if you have ssh access, it is EASY to make a wrong manipulation and get everything messed up....
Honestly, there is no big difference between using localhost instead of a subdomain. I would minimize the work you do on the test domain (Eg, localhost or subdomain) and use a dedicated Publisher instance for this purpose. I use a subdomain to get the look and feel right for my site and then finish the work on the main domain.
But I definitely would disable CDN during the design work. You don't want to have this additional level of caching during this step.
Daniel Leu | Photography
DanielLeu.com
My digital playground (eg, Backlight tips&tricks): lab.DanielLeu.com
Offline
Pages: 1