I’m confused about the proper way to create Menu Sets and Albums. Initially I created a Menu Set (called Photography) via Designer and selected Design for that. I started adding entries for each gallery menu item and linked each to an album. After I did 5 or 6 I found I could not reorder them and cause the menu on the site to match that order. So I abandoned editing the menu that way and went to Publisher and added new albums to the Photography menu set there and reordered the album thumbnails by selecting Photography in the Publisher. That all worked great.
Now I want those menu items to point to a landing page that will contain a text intro essay, an image and a link to the actual gallery. I can’t find how to do this. I went back the my original set of entries I had made while editing the Menu Set in Designer and changed one of the entries to point to a Page type and a new Page I had created as a test landing page. That had no effect on the site, it still points to the album.
Is it possible to make a menu item take you to an intermediary page that then takes you to the album? A related question, I’d like the name of the menu set to be interactive and take you to a grid of thumbnails of the galleries (which it currently is doing). If the menu items in Photography now point to landing pages, what will appear in those thumbnails? Can I control that (for example, select an image on that landing page as the thumbnail)?
You can custom design the entire menu structure in designer. But that seems to be complicated.
Why would you like a landing page for each album? You could add the text of the landing page in the Page Copy section of the gallery and have the gallery grid just underneath. This seems to make navigation easier as the visitor doesn’t have to make an extra click to get to the gallery.
You don’t need to enter each album in the menu set. Any album you add to an album set, can automatically be added to the navigation menu.
When you create a menu item for an album set, select “Album Set” in the “Link to” option, then choose a descent level.
In your case, you can create an album set named “Photography” and publish your albums to that set.
With the settings above, the albums are automatically added to the “Photography” menu item’s drop-down navigation menu.
You can reorder the item in Backlight Publisher (even if you published using Lightroom), save the new album order, and the new order will be reflected in the drop-down menu. (you may need to clear template cache after making the order change to see it in the drop-down menu.)
As Daniel says, your landing pages could simply be the albums themselves, with a bit of text above (or below) the thumbnail grid.
You can assign an album image to be the “cover,” or representative image displayed in an album set. You can have it selected randomly or choose the image you want to use.
There are a couple of ways to select the image you want to use.
The menu structure is fine as is, it’s just what the elements in the menu point to (landing page vs album).
I’m not sure I understand your suggestion of adding the text to the Page Copy section. I’m using the Galleria add-on. When you click on the menu item it doesn’t take you to a grid of images but rather to the first image in the gallery. There is the grid icon that takes you to the thumbnails for the gallery but I don’t want to put the text there as many people will never go there but just run through the larger single images.
I understand your cautionary note about adding an extra step to get to the images and I debated this. But I feel it is essential for my work as almost all of it is very abstract but not random - without some explanation, viewers will not get what I consider essential context with which to view the images.
I didn’t realize you were using Galleria.
The easiest way to do what you want to do is still to add the text to the album itself. But if you need a “landing page” then just create a new page (Desinger > Pages > Create New Page). Add all the text you want and then include a link to the slide show.
I don’t want to place the text with the thumbnail grids for reasons I explain to Daniel. So I really would like an intermediary landing page. I understand this has a drawback but I’ve thought carefully about it and it’s the lesser of two evils in my opinion. The website I am replacing uses this landing page mechanism, you can take a look here to see what I’m after (just select the first gallery in Photography there):
My dilemma is that so far I have not found a way to make the menu item take you to a page rather than an album. Any thoughts on that or is not possible?
See my response above about creating a landing page.
As far as adding the link to the menu set, it depends. If you’re trying to add a page link to a menu item that uses the “Album Set” Link To… option, then you can’t do that.
If the menu item you’re tying to add to is not an Album Set menu, then just choose “Page” as the Link To… option and select the page (it has to exist already)
Maybe create a text image that has the text of your landing page. Then place this image at the beginning of your slideshow. You can create this text image in Photoshop. There are other Backlight users out there using this approach.
Use an album-set as the landing page. Each gallery would be placed in a separate album-set. The structure would look like:
The advantage of this approach is that you can take advantage of the automatic handling of the menu structure and breadcrumbs. I think this comes closest to your wish for a landing page while not overcomplicating managing this structure.
This was my original approach to doing this, changing the link to Page instead of Album - I assume you mean in the Designer>Menu Set>Design area for the particular menu set in question. As I mentioned in my original post, that area is only partially populated with my albums due to realizing I could not reorder the menu successfully from there and finding that just adding albums in Publisher to the menu set works fine and lets me reorder them easily. I did try to change one of the several albums that ARE in the Designer section from linking to an album to a new page I had created. But it had no effect on the behavior of the menu on the site, it still took me to the album.
Is this not working because I didn’t put ALL of the albums in the menu set in the Designer section. Everything else about the menu set is working perfectly so it seems odd there would just be this one side effect. I don’t really understand what the point is of editing the Designer>Menu Set>Design path to the menu set. Maybe it’s exactly for this reason - adding all the albums via the Publisher as I’ve done works, but you can only add Albums that way, you can’t add a Page for example, which I’m trying to do. But adding the Page to the Menu Set as I’ve said isn’t working for some reason. I am clearing the template cache after any change to a template.
Your second option is interesting, maybe I’ll try that if all else fails.
Your first suggestion brings up another issue I’ve had with websites for years (I’ve built several both for myself and others). It’s a common problem on the web based on how many suggestions you find for fixing it when you google “text in images not sharp on web page”. Text in images on web pages is not nearly as sharp as regular html text, at least in my experience. I’d be interested if you or others on the forum have figured out something I haven’t tried. I use PNG vs jpeg (supposed to be best for text) and have tried Bi-Lateral and Bicubic Sharper Quality settings in the file conversion to PNG. I’ve tried bumping up the resolution the files as well. It’s just not sharp to my eye - I am perhaps being too picky but it’s definitely an issue for me.
Do you have an example of use of text in an image that is as sharp as html text? I’d love to solve this problem for all sorts of reasons!
Good idea to send a screen shot! I’m still learning what info will help on the forum. I’m attaching a screenshot of the Designer list of menu items in the Photography menu set. As you see, the first item is now linked to an existing page. And I can drag and drop the items in this list to reorder them. I’m having 2 problems here - one is that the order I create here does not match the order of the items in the menu on the site. Second, when I select Geometria from the menu it still takes me to the album, not the page.
Which leads me to wonder what the purpose of this Designer screen is - perhaps as I speculated in my last reply, it’s so you can link to something other than an album. Managing the menu set in the Publisher lets you add albums but you can link to a Page.
That’s always the problem when rendering text as an image. Nope, I don’t have an example. I could imagine a phplugins based approach, but that would take some effort.
There may be a miscommunication in terms. You don’t really manage the menu set in Publisher. When adding albums to sets using Publisher, items will be automatically added to the album set’s drop down menu and to the album set page.
In a menu set, you have five choices for linking:
Page
Album
Album Set
URL
Non-interactiv
Understood. You create pages and menu sets in Designer>Pages/Menu Sets. You create albums in Publisher. When you create an album in publisher it is added to the menu set. By selecting the menu set in Publisher, you are taken to a page where you can reorder the menu items. This is how I ultimately added all the albums and reordered them and that all works as expected.
My problem is the desire to have a menu item send me to a page rather than an album. I understand the way to do that is to edit the link destination in Designer>Menu Sets.
When you go into Design on a menu set in Designer you can add menu items and link them to one of the 5 choices and it says you can reorder the items, though neither of those functions seem to be working for me - I can drag and drop the items in Designer>Menu Sets but it doesn’t result in reordering of those items on the site (only reordering Publisher does that for me). And changing the link to point to a page instead of an album (as you see in the screenshot) doesn’t change what happens when you select that album from the menu - still goes to the album, not a page.
So I think I understand everything you’ve said but it just isn’t working for me - specifically getting the Geometria menu item to send me to the landing page (as per my screenshot).
I’ve been clearing template cache frequently and also just cleared my browser history, but same result.
I apologize if my lack of familiarity with Backlight is confusing the issue! And I appreciate your patience in trying to help me sort it out.
Well, good to know that your experience is similar to mine and I’m not just crazy! What I don’t quite understand is that a normal image file can exhibit stunning detail and sharpness at least on par with what the detail in text requires, at least to me eye.
