Fresh install produces Contact, About pages error

Backlight 4 & 5 Support
#1

I’ve just installed BL3 using MAMP Pro on my Mac so I can develop my website prior to uploading it to my online server.

After going through the process of specifying the settings etc and using Lightroom to publish a test gallery I was getting quite happy until I discovered that the links to the About and Contact pages led to “not found” errors contrary to what is stated in the manual, namely:

”At this point, the Galleries link will yield an error; this is normal. On the other pages [About, Contact, Privacy], you will find dummy text. Feel free to explore, and let’s move on when you’re ready.”

Can anyone advise me on how to get these pages to display (even with the dummy text)?

#2

Check your menu set to make sure the menu items point to the correct pages.
Also, look under Designer > Pages.
Make sure that there are About and Contact pages

#3

Thanks for the quick reply @rod_barbee.

I’ve been through and checked all the settings I could think of - including menu set and pages. The menu set point to the pages and the pages themselves exist in the designer - they are the default ones with the dummy text in. That’s really why I posted here as I could not think of anything else to check.

I assume that those pages should actually exist as html files somewhere in the root folder of the website, but there is no sign of them which implies that the install process somehow failed to create them in the first place. Why might that be?

#4

No, they don’t exist as files. they’re fed on demand, much like WordPress works I think.

Since we can’t take a direct look at your set up, can you post some screen shots. Things like Settings > Website Settings : URL format
and a screen shot of your Menu Set

But since you’re using MAMP, you also need to make sure that all the needed modules are being installed.
If you look at the bottom of this page you’ll see what’s required:
https://backlight.me/get-backlight/

#5

Here are the screen shots you mentioned.

URL Format

Menu Set

I’m pretty sure my MAMP environment satisfies the requirements.

It’s night-time here now so I’m off to bed! Goodnight!

Oh - I tried including my screen shots but it said that I can’t put images in the post. That’s because I’m a new user I guess.

#6

Ah, the new user thing. Yep, that’s probably it.

#7

This suggests to me that you have a working .htaccess file within public_html/backlight, but none within the public_html directory (where I use public_html to denote the directory where your site resides). If you are using Backlight to manage the entire site, and not using something like Wordpress, then make sure the .htaccess file is in place within public_html. If not there it can be copied from the top-level of the installer zip file.

If that still doesn’t help then you may need to configure Apache to allow overrides on the directory where your site is located. I can advise further on how to do that. If you have clean URLs within the Backlight admin (e.g. visiting yoursite.local/backlight/ redirects you to yoursite.local/backlight/admin/login/ when you not logged in, then that’s a good indication that ‘allow overrides’ is already enabled.

If none of that helps, then change your Page URL Format setting to ?page=about. URLs will look ugly but they’ll work.

#8

Also worth pointing out that the .htaccess file may be invisible, depending on your OS settings. In MacOS Finder, files beginning with a dot – such as .htaccess – are invisible by default, but can be made visible using the keyboard command Cmd-Shift-. (that’s Cmd-Shift-Period).

On Windows, I don’t know. Else you can navigate your folders using an FTP client and enabled visibility for such files in the client’s preferences.

#9

Thanks @rod_barbee, @Ben and @Matthew for your input.

Unfortunately nothing helped.

I have, however, found a solution.

When I originally created the host using MAMP Pro I asked for MAMP to generate a certificate for https access. I thought this was the best approach because, obviously, my actual online website is secure. The URL of this ended up as https://bl.photography.pixelsnaps:8890

But experiencing this problem made me a bit desperate as buying Backlight is a not insignificant investment so I deleted the host from MAMP Pro and created a new one but this time without asking it to generate the certificate for https access. After installing Backlight 3 this time the URL to the site is http://bl.photography.pixelsnaps:8888 and now I get the default Contact and About pages with no problem.

That’s great but now I’ve noticed another issue: when I go to Designer > Templates and click Download Template Presets I get to the Backlight presets page but I then am unable to import any of the presets. For example, the error I get from Safari says: Not Found The requested URL /backlight/designer/list_templates/ was not found on this server. The URL being accessed is

http://bl.photography.pixelsnaps/backlight/designer/list_templates/?c=admin&a=import_template

My question, I suppose, is has anyone ever installed and run Backlight 3 on a Mac using MAMP Pro and if so, what do I need to do to get it to work?

#10

the link to download templates should point here:
https://backlight.theturninggate.net/presets/
at least it does in my Backlight installations.

When I click on the Import Preset as New Template it does just that and adds the preset to my templates.

Of course, my sites are online. But that’s how it’s supposed to work.

I think there are others using MAMP, perhaps one of them will chime in.

#11

That’s where I get to when I said:

but when I then click on any of the 4 presets to import them unlike you I then get the Not Found error. Sorry for any confusion…

#12

You are running MAMP on port 8888, but the link is pointing to the default port 80. I just did a new MAMP install and set my port to 80 and it works.

Otherwise when you get the error, just try to change the URL by adding the port and see if this works: http://bl.photography.pixelsnaps:8888/backlight/designer/list_templates/?c=admin&a=import_template

1 Like
#13

This could be due to URL-rewriting now working on your setup. What’s the URL in your browser when you visit the main Designer page?

#14

This is what I get in Safari:

BL 1

If, however, I edit the port number into the HTML behind the Import Preset as New Template button with web inspector like this:

BL 2 2020-09-25_10-56-20
BL 2 2020-09-25_10-56-201096×127 46.3 KB

then it works as expected.

#15

Do you mean Designer Dashboard in which case it’s http://bl.photography.pixelsnaps:8888/backlight/designer/

or Designer Templates in which case it’s http://bl.photography.pixelsnaps:8888/backlight/designer/list_templates/

#16

Even though I’ve developed a lot of websites locally, before uploading them to online server, I’m not much of an “expert”! When I created my host I didn’t specify a port, I just ended up with 8888. The same was true when I created the secure host and ended up with 8890.

How do you set the port during host creation with MAMP?

EDIT - forget that - I’ve just seen where you can specify the port number in the MAMP General tab!

#17

Without having had a chance to try it myself, it looks like the handshake between our templates page and your site breaks when your site uses a non-standard port. I’ll look into this. For now, if you can run it on port 80 or 443 then that will hopefully solve it for you.

#18

Thanks, but the problem still exists. Using http access on port 80 gave further problems: using the visit site link from the BL3 control panel brought up a page that just had “It Works” on it. I couldn’t get anything else to show up at all.

I have now reverted to a secure MAMP host (https:) running on port 443 and I’m back to where I was at the start of this discussion: neither the Contact nor the About pages show anything but an error that looks like:

BL 01 2020-09-25_15-44-45
BL 01 2020-09-25_15-44-45714×229 32.5 KB

That’s the About page I get. As I said, much the same for the Contacts page.

I created galleries using the Lightroom service and that works well as does the Search page.

Galleries:

BL 02 2020-09-25_15-47-05
BL 02 2020-09-25_15-47-051208×1082 134 KB

So, having been round the houses and having spent a lot of time I feel that BL3 has been a lot of hard work that isn’t yet finished.

#19

Although I use MAMP from time to time, I found it much easier to develop my site on a real web host in a subdomain. This way, I don’t have to worry about the environment. Once the design is complete, I just copy the installation over the main site, change the site url and clear all the caches.

#20

Hi @Daniel, thanks for the input. I can believe when you say you find it much easier, but even though I’m no professional I’ve never had a problem using MAMP on either Mac or Windows before for 12 different websites. This is my 13th (!) but my first using Backlight. In the past I’ve used Joomla, Drupal, RapidWeaver, Blocs, Wordpress and a couple of others whose names I’ve forgotten (and are obsolete now anyway).

Personally, and this is a hangover from my software development days, I will never develop anything on a “live” platform. Maybe now I am paying the price :upside_down_face: