I started working on an Essay the other day and set it to private https://tjowens.com/photo-essays/dudo/
Initially it came with a strange layout for the masthead and asking for login credentials. I wandered around trying to find out where these options were and could not find them.
I then noticed padding sliders looking a bit strange in the template used for the page and setting them back to zero made different changes to the masthead and lost the log in details. Now the template affected pages are all at sea as it were.
I suspect this is similar to other posts that @rod_barbee has been responding to.
I’m leaving all other templates untouched for now even if sliders look odd.
Obviously, with Essay being an album based template, all my galleries using that template are behaving badly now.
The problem does not seem to manifest itself on mobile, just desktop.
Any pointers? Always grateful in case I’m being a PICNIC.
TomO
@Matthew and @Ben are aware of this.
What I’ve done is gone through the page template settings making corrections to certain padding and gutters settings, padding, borders, border radius settings, some alignment settings if I remember…
Once it’s all back together how I like, I export the template. Repeat for other album set and album templates.
Then, when things go weird again I can just import those templates and assign as needed.
And it can affect mobile too, especially Gutter settings in album set templates. They’ll get set to 125px and squeeze the thumbnails into teeny tiny little baby thumbs.
Thanks Rod,
I’ve tried a few times to reset the template used for Essay and some aspects have come back OK. Obviously, I have not got it all back as the masthead area is not consistent with the rest of the site, but fairly close.
As a matter of interest, where do I find the controls for the login request when clicking on the private Essay.
I see that the url points to a clients page but I have not set one up. Is this normal behaviour regardless of formattting for a private Essay?
Thanks,
TomO
For that border and spacing around the masthead, look in the page template under Masthead > Title/Logo. Look for Border and the two Padding settings
If you designate an album as Private in the album’s Visibility control (in Features), then you’ll see the log in fields.
You need to create a client and assign the album to the client.
The Client page is already part of Backlight. To format that page, assign a template to it. Backlight > Admin > Settings > Personalisation: Client Template.
Thanks Rod,
Found those features. Never used them before (conciously), but assigning a client and password does not display the content of the Essay. That’s not a problem for me as I only set it to private as I was constructing it and as it was not the best, I did that rather than stick in my drafts. Is this a feature of Essay?
Thanks,
TomO
I think that the Private setting applies to all types of albums so you should be able to see the essay if you’ve got credentials. You’d want to test this in another browser or first log out of Backlight.
You don’t need to make albums private while working on them, you can just hide them from the album set (Features tab of album settings)
Thanks Rod,
I’m working through slowly to try and save aspects that work in exported templates to save lots of re-work in case it goes south.
I’ll re-focus on the Essay once I’ve done that.
TomO
I think that the Essay not appearing in a Private album may be a bug. I can view other types of albums designated private, but the Essay album does not appear. I’ll report it to @Matthew
OK thanks Rod
Hi Rod,
The weird random border stuff has been fixed now with the rollout of the fix last night.
Thanks,
TomO
Great! I know Matt and Ben were putting a lot of effort into it.
Also, Ben told me that Essay albums not appearing in Protected or Private albums is a current limitation, not a bug.
OK Thanks Rod