Problems applying Pangolin Journal

Backlight 4 & 5 Support
#1

Hi there at ttg,
I have successfully upgraded to Backlight 4 and not experienced any problems with my site as is. When I now try to apply the new Pangolin Journal though, I run into problems.
I was able to successfully download and install the Journal Starter Template, have watched Matt’s video about this template and can’t still resolve the issues.

What happens:
I have an album set inside another album set. For the set, which resides inside an album set I like to apply the Journal Starter Template.

This is possible in principle and I see that it is applied, but the results are not as expected. For simplicity and following Matt’s video I have turned off all blocks except the 8th one.

The albums are all there, but for most of them no thumbnail images are shown, just the titles are visible. The only exception is the album, for which I had upploaded a specific cover image through the Backlight publisher. All the other albums use cover images, which are in a hidden thumbnail album from where I have selected them through Lightroom. I know the cover images (thumbnails) maybe not ideal, but this should work in principle, no?

The next problem occurs when I click on any of the albums. I then get a Paradox 404! error, which is caused by a wrong link to the selected album.

When using my working Standard Pangolin album set template, I get this link to the album (example):
https://fotowarkstee.de/galleries/2_tours-trips-and-excursions/1_australia/desert-parrot-trip/

but when trying to go there while the Journal Starter Template is active, I get this link:
https://fotowarkstee.de/galleries/1_australia/desert-parrot-trip/
As one can see, the part for the first album set is not included in the link and hence no album is shown.

I’ll keep the Journal Starter Template active for the time being so that you can have a look, although I’d like to go back to a working situation asap as you can imagine.

Please let me know if you need login credentials.

Alfred

#2

For the thumbnails, pangolin-journal is built around using the Cover and Hero Image assignment features implemented in Backlight 3.2. The old way of using the custom_thumbnails folder isn’t going to work. We’ve heard one other comment about the old way of doing things, and so it’s something we need to evaluate to determine whether it’s something that we can or should support. But, these are the takeaways for the current implementation:

  • Journal utilizes the JSON API for content
  • The JSON API doesn’t serve images from a custom_thumbnails folder, as that folder is not a part of Backlight’s data layer (it was a workaround solution that predates much of Backlight’s data layer)

And so, the solution here is that you should assign Hero and/or Cover images via Backlight’s publisher when using journal. If nothing else, I should try to call this out in the documentation. That’s my oversight, and I apologize for having not made that clear in the provided resources.

The latter issue with your paths, though, sounds like a bug that we’ll need to investigate and fix. Again, we’re getting the routing paths from the JSON API, so if the JSON API isn’t returning addresses correctly beyond a certain depth, then @Ben and I will need to do something about that. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

#3

Btw, have you updated to 4.0.1 yet? We posted it yesterday, and it fixes some things. This specific issues wasn’t on our radar, but there are some updates to path determination, and that may or may not change this. Would be good to know whether it makes a difference on your site.

#4

Matt,
I have run the update meanwhile and did a check afterwards, but it did not resolve the link problem.
I would for now switch back to my Standard Pangolin Template and work on cover and hero images, unless you would like me to keep the Journal Starter Template active for testing purposes?

#5

Go ahead and put your website into a usable state, please.

I haven’t tried it yet, but the issue looks simple enough to reproduce, and I’ll try to do that locally later today. Please hold onto your templates and such so that we can change back if we need to, but I’m hoping to be able to debug things locally so that it needn’t burden you in the meantime.

#6

To start with a new feature, I usually create a hidden album (hide from album set & hide from search). This way, I can play around and learn about the new features without having my site being a mess for visitors stopping by. Another option is a separate test installation. I have this as well but it takes more effort to set it up and maintain it.

#7

I’m on to it. We should have a fix for this in the next day or so.

#8

Hi @alfred, I have put in a silent fix for this issue. To apply the fix, visit Backlight Modules and click ‘reinstall’ for the entry for module-publisher. The links to albums should then work on the album set using a Pangolin Journal template.

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#9

Hi @Ben , the problem is gone. Thank you very much for the quick response and the fix. Superb support, as usual :slight_smile:.
Cheers, Alfred

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