Hi all
on my way to Backlight 3 I decided to first upgrade my version 1.2.3 to 2.x and after that to 3.x. I was happy with Version 1.x for a number of years.
Now, after I did the upgrade to Backlight 2 (just to gain experience) which seems to have gone fairly well, the website is still running
However, I have an issue with the Lightroom Publishing Module (5.03) that I installed in my existing LR Classic CC 9.3 (deactivated the old one, version 3.2.3.1). In the settings I have this, as per docu
mydomain/backlight/publisher/
Now, LR is unable to publish and also the check authentication fails with : Unable to find publisher.
I then checked the folder structure on my server and I find that the folder publisher is now located in the data folder (and not in the backlight folder as before). I also did a reinstall of the publisher module from the admin panel - does not help.
I even tried to set the API URL to
mydomain/backlight/data/publisher/
But that does not help.
Is there a problem with the installation, where should the folder publisher be?
when installing Backlight 3, did you copy the .htaccess file included in the ZIP? Easy to overlook it, as it might be invisible in your operating system.
The website works ok after updating from version 1 to version 2 and here is how I did it:
within the backlight folder I deleted everything except data and custom folders
from the backlight 2 download folder I transferred everything EXCEPT data and custom folders (and included .htaccess and the rest).
did all the things as per update docu
replaced the TTG Publisher in LR Classic 9.3
Result: website works, Publishing from LR does not work - always gives unable to find publisher
Currently, I have no idea how to proceed. I have two options: updating to backlight 3 with the hope that this will fix the problem, OR trying to fix the problem for backlight 2 and update to version3 once this is fixed.
I might add that my foto website is a subdomain of descan.com and backlight resides in a folder foto. This worked perfectly for a number of years with backlight version 1.
I don’t recommend updating to BL3 until you get this working. That just adds one more variable into the mix. (though I do recommend upgrading once everything is working fine)
It looks like your .htaccess file isn’t working. Can you provide me with a Backlight admin login via message, so that I can look into this?
I very much appreciate your help.
After changing the API URL according to your suggestion the Authentication in the Publishing Manager runs ok.
But when I try to republish an album I get another, possibly unrelated error, see picture.
Sent you the credentials per message.
Any ideas?
And indeed, after checking the installed PHP version I find that they have 5.6.40, which seems from the 19th century. My Wordpress Blog complained about this for some time now. I requested an update and once I get an answer, I will try again to publish from LR Classic.
I assume that my unusual API URL (currently https://foto.descan.com/backlight/?m=publisher) is also needed because of this old PHP version.
I was able to switch to PHP 7.2.13 in my admin panel for my hosting. That helped for the Wordpress Blog which seems to be happy now.
Unfortunately, publishing an album from LR Classic 9.3 still fails - at least with another type of error. See pic. The title says: this collection can not be updated.
I did not know that I could but now I did activate the exif module in the domain panel of my hosting. And, indeed, I am now able to publish albums from LR Classic 9.3 using TTG Publisher 5.0.3.
Thank you all for pointing me in the right direction. I certainly would have been lost without your help.
Now that is works I can safely update to Backlight 3.
I finally updated to Backlight 3 (what a lovely and easy way to update, thanks to the developers) and everything looks fine and I am able to publish from LR.
There is just on little thing that seems not to be according to the book: Ben suggested that I set the API URL to https://foto.descan.com/backlight/?m=publisher
instead of what the doc says, which would be https://foto.descan.com/backlight/publisher
I tried resetting it to what the doc says but with that setting LR brings an error: Unable to find Publisher.
So, I am happy - but feel just a bit uneasy about this deviation from the book and what that excactly means for future versions.
@Ben is the developer of all the Backlight php magic. If he advises you to use a particular setting, then you don’t have to worry about that.
And to make you feel better, using the local .htaccess file, all /backlight/publisher requests are remapped to /backlight/?m=publisher. So what you are using is the direct interface while the rest of us uses a more human readable version.
Hi @dakota127, not to take your mind out of rest, but it’s better if you can get .htaccess and clean URLs working. It makes URLs to your site look cleaner. Also, we developer in an environment where clean URLs work 99% of the time, so there is a chance that we’ll miss something where clean URLs don’t have fallback mechanism to non-clean URLs.
Are you able to share a Backlight admin login and FTP access via direct message, so that I can try and get clean URLs working on your site?
Ben again pointed me in the right direction and I want to share his findings with the community. He found this:
I had a look via FTP and the Backlight admin, and it looks to me as though the .htaccess files are being ignored completely by your web server.
And indeed, that was the case. I checked the settings on my host’s admin panel and found that the checkbox ‘enable .htaccess’ was unchecked for this particular subdomain. I must have overlooked this long ago since all the other subdomains are ok. So now, I have enabled the processing of .htaccess and all is well. Now, my mind is truly at rest.
Thank you all for your thoughts.
