A shy and somewhat cautious ‘hello’ from a new member here.
I’ve recently purchased the latest Backlight 3 after years of managing with The Turning Gate gallery plugins for use in Lightroom to create galleries on my website. 2018 was the last one! Was there a 2019 that i missed?
I have to admit the new Backlight 3 (BL) program is not working as i expected but never one to throw toys out of pram the challenge to learn how to use it properly is exciting, esp as i’ve now paid for it and the gallery presentations are second to none as far as i can see demonstrated (-:
Upon installation BL overrides my index.html page on my existing website - it turns out that BL uses index PHP and my server allegedly prefers those, so i removed everything BL from my server and want to start all over again leaving my existing site intact with its front page (homepage) as it is.
Maybe i’m setting up BL wrong from the start ? - it seems to assume that i want to create a whole new site right from the beginning including the home page on my server.
All i want to do right now is create some galleries, review them (offline) and then add them to my server and link to them from my existing front (home) page…
Is this possible or have i barked up the wrong tree with this program?
To set things up for galleries only, you don’t need the index.php and the .htaccess files that are in the root of the unzipped installer folder.
Just upload: the galleries/ and backlight/ folders and then go through the installation process.
When you publish your albums, they will be placed in the galleries/ folder. If you already have a galleries/ folder that you don’t want to mess with, then instead of uploading the galleries/ folder, create a different folder and name it something else. It just needs to be at the same server level as the backlight/ folder.
In Lightroom Classic Publisher, just make sure that the top-level galleries folder matches the name of the folder you created.
Backlight is really nothing like the old html galleries. You won’t be able to create galleries, review them offline and then simply add them to the server. You’ll need to publish them directly to your site.
So from what a can understand, I can create albums via the Backlight installation on my server (live) and then make links to the pages it creates from my existing front page… I’ll have another go at installing BL tomorrow.
I didn’t realise i could still use the Backlight3 with Lightroom, looks like I’ll be investigating how to do that too. i only ever used the TTG plugins up to 2018… do you happen to know if there were any more after 2018? - they were so easy to use ! :blush
yep. Or you could create a link to the Galleries page that Backlight creates instead of having to add links for each album you publish.
The only way Lightroom interfaces with BL3 is through the TTG Lightroom Publisher plug-in. And that’s optional. I like managing my images through Lightroom so I use the Lightroom Publisher for adding albums.
Thanks Rod, - Link to a Galleries page is the way to go
re the publishers plug-in, is that included free in the BL3 package… will investigate (-:
Don’t want to go off topic too much in this thread but would like a pointer or two towards a walk thro tutorial for Backlight3 use from scratch. Esp for those like me who would like to create their own front page and use Backlight to make fabulous albums/galleries to show their work. I’ve found lots of info relating Backlight’s updates from way back but I’ve not been here from the start and don’t know what’s out of date or irrelevant for using the latest release - I’m probably missing the obvious so please excuse my late arrival to everything Backlight 3
the Publisher plug in is included.
As to the other topic, why don’t you start a new topic on that. Tell us what you’ve got going now (a link to the site would help) and we can guide you.
Also, Matt has created a few videos. I’ll see if I can find those links…
There’s a lot there. The initial Backlight 1 video will show the basics. Even though it’s four years old, the basics of Backlight have not changed that much.
Thanks Rod, Encouraged that BL1 tutorials are still valid. I’ll attempt a new thread as I try to work out Backlight3 as a newbee
Link to my overdue web site re-vamp here gotta get that ssl / https sorted (-:
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I just reinstalled Backlight without the .htaccess and index.php to my server but cannot access the mydomain.com/backlight page = HTTP ERROR 500
so now i’m going to cpanel to remove everything Backlight and find out how to instal Backlight wiithout it creating a new home page which over-rides the existing html one… apparently it has something to do with ‘preferences’ - ??
that should be it.
If you happened to upload the backlight/ folder into a sub-folder on your site, then you’ll need to include that subfolder in the path.
A screen shot of your site’s folder structure might help us to diagnose what’s going on. You can simply paste images into your post.
Thanks Rod,
Yes nothing to do with Backlights preferences, i was talking about my servers’ preferences for the php index file which it chooses over my existing html (i think) when I ran the instalation the first time a week or so ago.
I had today achieved as you illustrated above - uploaded ‘backlight’ and ‘galleries’ folders without .htaccess and index.php and run the installation process successfully but when I tried to log into the next stage I was met with the ‘500’ message
Do you know if your hosting meets the requirements outlined at the bottom of this page: https://backlight.me/get-backlight/
what version of php is your host using?
Who is your hosting company?
My host is KRYSTAL (previously Blackfoot) I’ll check the criteria required tomorrow but have never run into probs with them. The issue experienced is hopefully a setting i need to change in cpanel to allow Backlight to instal without over-riding my existing homepage or something new I need to learn as a newby of Backlight whilst wanting to keep an existing homepage - for what it’s worth
If you’re just installing Backlight and not the index.php and the .htaccess files, then Backlight cannot override your site’s home page. It’s those two files that can make that happen. (well, technically, it’s the index.php file).
But since you’re not installing that, there should be no problem.
Just found out that my server was using php 5.5 so changed it to 5.6 and I’ve now been able to instal Backlight 3 without the index php file so my existing site remains visible.
Now to navigate all the options presented after login - Looks like a very steep learning curve to just create just gallery pages to me - but will persevere now i’ve paid and successfully installed BL3
The learning curve is only as steep as you want it to be. Getting your first galleries published is simple, and can be done very quickly. You can deep dive on customization as much for as little as you like, but I recommend not jumping around the designer; follow the top-to-bottom workflow.
