Community @ The Turning Gate

Hi again,

I solved most of the issues with Vegas Slideshow presentations that I had earlier (thanks Rod!). Now have a couple questions just about tweaking the slideshows.

The shows are inline on pages used to separate my content into broad areas - art, commerce, etc. Sizing is OK, but I can't figure out how to control the order of display, or even which image loads first. There are controls both in TTG Publisher and the Lightroom Publisher module (my galleries are built with the latter), with settings for determining which image is displayed first. I changed this from "Random" to spec a particular image, but no effect, first image is still random (these are small galleries, only 6-8 images, BTW).

Have also looked at display order - controls suggest options to display by filename or creation date, "managed by Lightroom" or "Custom". But the order of display seems random, whichever of the last two options I select. What is meant by "Custom" here, anyway? I thought it might be analogous to custom order in the LR collection that is being published - no? And again, the "managed by Lightroom" option doesn't reflect how they are ordered in the LR Publish album.

What am I missing here?

Thanks,

John
www.jwlimages.com

I am trying to include an image on my Contact page (ultimately want this on the About page as well). Following Rod Barbee's excellent tutorial, made an "img" folder inside the Custom folder inside Backlight, uploaded images to it, then included the simplest version of his recommended text in the About page's Page Copy area. But image doesn't show - the "alternate"/error text shows instead.

OK, looking into it a bit more, I think it may be related to how I have set up 3 different sections for my site - "Art" "Commerce" & "Personal". They each display galleries, etc. just fine, and I have tweaked the navigation to make them seem like 3 different sites. But when I use Rod's technique to display an image inline, it seems like I'm getting tripped up by how I have separated the 3 areas.

My backlight folder is at the root of my domain, as in the tutorial. This is the text I pasted into the Page Copy block:

<img src="backlight/custom/img/SmallThings03LR.jpg" width="500" alt="Uh oh, image should display here!">

when I dig out the image address info from the empty image block on my site, I see not the source info I specified, but this:

<http://jwlimages.com/Contact_Art/backli … gs03LR.jpg>

- the addition of the "/Contact_Art/" apparently causes the fail.

How do I get Backlight to not add this error to the file path?

Oh yeah, here's an example of the problem page:    <http://jwlimages.com/Contact_Art/>

Thanks!

John

I am almost finished updating my test site from CE4 to Backlight2. Before I start putting things in place for my production site, I have a pretty basic question:

Am I going to need to go to https URLs soon? Google is starting to flag 'non-secure' sites now, but they still work. If I build my site without SSL will I be more-or-less forced to implement it in the near future?

(apologies if this is bone-head question, but as you can see I am not very savvy on this stuff)

I can continue my site with just http URLs - it's primarily a portfolio not a sales site. But if it seems like ultimately I'll need a security certificate & https URLs, I would rather go that route now than have to update it in a year or so. Also, I am assuming that implementing SSL before I build the production site will make things go much easier than adding it later - correct?

Thanks for any wisdom you can share on this - and don't hesitate to correct any possible misconceptions here!

John

Trying to transition from CE4 to Backlight. Have had a long detour into slideshow gallery issues, but have realized that my Backlight test site looks & feels way too big & clunky. My page templates use pretty much default specs, e.g., layout size 1140px max-width, 1024 breakpoint. But the page & all elements on it - logo, text, etc. - seem out of scale, especially when compared to my older CE4 site.

Here are screengrabs of each, as seen on my iPad (1536x2048px):
http://ftp.jwlimages.com/home4/jwlimage … n_iPad.PNG
and
http://ftp.jwlimages.com/home4/jwlimage … n_iPad.PNG

For desktop versions, Backlight...
http://jwlimages.com/Commerce
and CE4...
http://jwlimages.com/Art

Can I build a Backlight site that doesn't seem to scale everything up so dramatically?

Thanks for any thoughts on this.

John