I want to add a page with text and illustrations

But how do I do that? A long time ago I wrote in HTML but that doesn’t seem to work and the Markdown language seems complicating and not doing what I want and has less detailed commands like sizes of illustrations. What does it take to use Wordpress, does that make sense for only a text page?

Create a new page in Backlight > Designer and add the html you want. That’s all there really is to it.
If you’re having problems, be sure to post a link to the page

I’ll try again then… tnx

Markdown is less complicated; that’s the entire point of it.

HTML works just fine in any space that supports Markdown. However, you cannot wrap Markdown with HTML tags. Inside of an HTML block, Markdown is disabled.

So, you do this:

## Heading

<div>
  Some text.
</div>

But not this:

<div>
  ## Heading

  Some text.
</div>

In the latter example, the heading would not be seen as Markdown syntax. You would need to use <h2>Heading</h2> instead.

What does it take to use Wordpress?

It takes Wordpress. You’ll need to install it and set it up and use it.

FWIW, we’re going to be leaning harder into Markdown for upcoming new features.

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Ok… so I found out that the list with bullets does work in the main copy but not in the pallets:

Are the side bars/pallets not for Markdown?

By default, list-style in pallets is set to none.
You can override this with custom css or writing the list in html with inline styling to add the list-type that you want.
You’ll also need to add some padding-left when you do this.

Why is that? That is stupid. I want lists in the sidebars. Quite logical and often done so. So what is the reason for this? I am a photographer, no sitebuilder. I bought this software for ease of use and not having to write code.

My guess is to save space. Matt always has very good reasons behind design choices.

But it’s easy enough to implement in custom css though.

.widget ol li {
list-style: decimal;
}
.widget ul li {
list-style: square;
}

Ok thanks but where do I paste that code? Oh I see already

Marvellous advice. Worked! But I gues I’ll be walking into more of this… stay tuned…

Yeah, Markdown works just fine in the pallets, including lists. They’re styled differently, for reasons of design choice. For example, we use the same sidebar styling for the Wordpress theme, as you might expect. Widgets such as a listing of recent post titles are structured as a list; we would not want list bullets for such a list. And so on, reasons … if you don’t like our design choices, then you can use the custom CSS features to do whatever you’d like.

Most of our design choices are made to ensure that the largest number of users should not have to write code to do the things we think they would normally want to do. That doesn’t mean that YOU, individual person with very specific expectations, won’t have to write some code to do the things that you want.

The flexibility is most important ofcourse. I am looking into Wordpress but I don’t understand to much for now. I just want to make pages with text and illustrations like in Word. And some notes on either side.

If you want images that float (text flows around the image), then you’ll need to use html to add the images.

You can use the pallets as sidebars for notes off to the side. Just be aware that on mobile devices, those notes will not appear on the main page but will be accessible from the mobile menu buttons that will appear.
(the point where the site goes mobile will depend on your breakpoint settings in the page template. the smallest is 640px).
If you want sidebars where the information stays on the main page when viewed on mobile devices, then I’d suggest using the TTG Responsive Grid. You would have to write everything in html.

If you plan on having a lot of these text/illustration pages, it may just be easier to do in WordPress.

If you’re not already sold on Wordpress, and don’t mind waiting a bit, you might want to hold off. I am planning an “essay” type module for an upcoming release; if not Backlight 4.0, then 4.1. It may or may not appeal to you; I dislike Wordpress, and I’m planning something very different, mixing existing Markdown support with defined HTML patterns and an implementation of our JSON API. If it comes together as I envision it, I think some people will like it, while others may prefer the Wordpress way of doing things. But at least you’ll have the choice.

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I’m not in too much of a hurry. I can start writing and take care of illustrations anyway, it will take most of the time and the rest is lay-out.