Content with each photo

General
#1

The context: http://robertametcalfe.com/

I have been using TTG since close to the beginning. I have usually lagged in my upgrades and found it a bit frustrating, especially in the beginning, to re-learn the software to do an infrequent overhaul of my site. This was often associated with a quick look around to see what other software was available before I dug in. But I like the simplicity BackLight provides for publishing straight from Lightroom. It takes little thinking on my part and admittedly, lulls me into a bit of complacency with my site at times. My general impression is that more focus has been on the underlying functionality of the software in its continued development, including the significant, and welcomed, advancement in the web-based user interface, at the expense of increasing stylistic options to foster individual creativity in the creation of one’s site. Every once in a while I browse the gallery and see some very good web sites but there is always the common denominator that they have the look and feel of a TTG powered website. I know the focus is on the images as stated by the Backlight literature but I would really like to shake my site up a bit because I have come to the conclusion that people connect better with my images when they read the story behind it (Observed from my Instagram followers). I have never blogged but I do not think that is what I am talking about. I simply want to include a paragraph for each photo and have different creative options for doing so. If someone can suggest how I could achieve this using Backlight, I would much appreciate it. Examples are also welcome.

Cheers,
Robert.

#2

You could use the Theater add-on in the Still Image presentation. Add your paragraph of text to the image caption metadata field and include the caption in the metadata section of the album template. You can put as many images as you want in the album.
This is limited in the way you can format the text. For example, I don’t believe you can add line breaks as html is not allowed in the metadata tokens

The most flexible way may just be by using a blog. In WordPress it’s pretty easy to add a picture with a paragraph or two of text and the text is easy to style.

If you want to do this in a Backlight page, then you could create single pages and write the copy and include the images using html.

Of the above, only the Theater Still Image option will allow you to manage the images in the album/page using Lightroom. Both of the others would require exporting images of appropriate size and uploading them to the site.

As to the available design options, there are a lot and it seems Matt and Ben keep adding them. For example, you can have vertical or horizontal navigation. You can put your masthead in any number of places. There are several options for gallery thumbnails. Lots of opportunities.
And on top of that, they’ve included access to page structure via phplugins for customization as well as an easy way to implement custom css.

2 Likes