I just made the jump from TTGCE4 and am questioning the logic right now as this is taking way longer to set up than I thought it would. I am not using Backlight to create my website, only to create two pages. Using CE4, i had made album sets and albums for two different sports teams. I created a landing page via my website theme in wordpress.
So the location was this: websitedotcom/team/ then on that page their were links to:
websitedotcom/team/22-23 and
websitedotcom/team/22-23
I had created two separate album sets within Lightroom using CE4 with various albums located for each team. But it appears that when doing it this way in Backlight, a page is created at website.com/team/ with links to the different album sets… Is there anyway to get rid of doing it this way, as I designed that original page with my website so it matches everything on the rest of my website?
I just read that custom thumbnails are better served by creating the albums via Backlight, so I guess I have to move on from using Lightroom to publish and update albums which I loved so.
You don’t have to do that.
You could just upload custom thumbnails as cover images for albums. You do this in Backlight
You could create separate top-level sets for each team and put each team’s albums in their respective set.
One could be at yoursite.com./team1/ and the other at yoursite.com/team2/
If I remember correctly the reason I did not do it that way is because of the naming and the breadcrumbs. Then i would have: yoursitedotcom/team1/home/ and the subsequent pages would be yoursitedotcom/team1/home/player1. Also the “home” text in the breadcrumbs would bring back to yoursitedotcom/team1 as opposed to what is supposed to be the landing page. Text and breadcrumbs are cleaner this way. Again, maybe something has changed since I tried this in CE4
breadcrumbs should look like:
top-level set name > album set name > album name
if you only have albums in your top-level set, then:
top-level set name > album name
So I went back and tried a test album set with an album in light room. Then in backlight assigned the custom cover image. But what appears is a broken link (when cache is cleared). It appears fine when looking in backlight.base settings for the album.
Cleared the template Cache and it seems to work now to see the thumbnail cover image. But you can have a look at what I mean here with the album naming hierarchy. Here’s the folder for the album set:
Test - Steven Vandervelde Photography access code:1234
When i actually get to one of the player’s pages the address looks like this:
34 Chloe - Steven Vandervelde Photography
test is your top-level set so the breadcrumb seems to be what you need?
I can’t access that album. the access code of 1234 isn’t working
Yes, sorry, I was working on it all weekend. I seem to have figured it all out using Lightroom and the landing page so it’s all good. I have each year as a album set with the players in albums. I created the landing page in backlight. All good to go. Thanks for your help.
Ok, so I do still have an issue. I’m not sure if this is a glitch or if it is an error on my part (I’m sure it’s the latter).
The landing page of my two album sets. I have assigned a cover image in backlight to each of them. However, when the album sets are protected, the cover image appears as a broken link. When you log in to one of the prospective album sets using the access code and then back out to the landing page using the breadcrumbs, the cover image for that album set will then appear.
See for yourself: Stars - Steven Vandervelde Photography click on the second broken image. Pass code to access is 1234. Note that album set is currently empty.
That’s the default behavior, but you can change that.
See this post
This is meant to prevent exposure of private images via thumbnails. As Rod suggests, you can disable this protection in Backlight’s settings.
Worked perfect. Thanks Rod
Makes sense…thanks Matt.