Blue blocks and HTML blocks, logic of fixing galleries

ChancyRat · October 17, 2013

Before I undertake this, because it's going to be a nightmare if I do it wrong, could I ask if I have the logic correct:

- The blue blocks of gallery content are locked because they're the legacy content.
- [If you want to modify blue block content, do so either in legacy, or, in new Smug, via organize, navigate to gallery, click settings for that gallery, and there will be the old legacy small field for description, which contains the content.]
- The legacy content with HTML will never automatically populate into new Smug format. At the point that I unveil, all that blue block content has to either have been moved to a new format block of some type (text or HTML), or it will kind of fall into plain text with junk.

If I want to fix the descriptions in the blue blocks, which have HTML, then:
- drag an HTML block onto the gallery, above the blue-block of content
- have another browser open to the same gallery but in legacy mode, and either copy/paste the HTML from that legacy edit mode, into the new HTML block
- or create new HTML from scratch, or with Dreamweaver (yes, watching for between body only), and put it in the HTML block.

Once I'm happy with how the HTML looks in preview mode:
- Now I'll see two blocks of the same material, blue block, and HTML block.
- I can't delete the blue block until I'm ready to unveil.
- After I unveil, the site will have 2 copies of descriptions, ostensibly good HTML, and some kind of distorted text from the blue blocks which will revert to text?
- Then I race through and delete the blue blocks?

Thanks.

denisegoldberg · October 17, 2013

I'm not sure what you mean by blue blocks of gallery content. You can't change the gallery block but you can change the contents of the gallery - both the description and the photos.

If you have HTML-only galleries on the old smug I highly recommend that you replace them in the new smug with pages. When you're ready to cut over to the new smug you can change the html-only galleries to unlisted; that way you have the content if you want or need it but it won't be visible on your site.

I had a large number of HTML-only galleries in legacy because I wanted a deeper structure than was possible in legacy. Those galleries were all in an unlisted category (now a folder) so as soon as I removed the links from my navbar they were gone from the new smug. I had also built my own breadcrumb in the descriptions of the galleries that contained my photos. As soon as I unveiled I started editing every gallery description on my site to remove the no-longer-needed Denise-created breadcrumb. That took a number of hours to complete. I changed the more recent galleries first, then just worked through folder by folder.

It might be helpful for you to link to an example of one of the galleries you are asking about.

--- Denise

ChancyRat · October 17, 2013

Blue is green

denisegoldberg wrote: »

I'm not sure what you mean by blue blocks of gallery content. You can't change the gallery block but you can change the contents of the gallery - both the description and the photos.

If you have HTML-only galleries on the old smug I highly recommend that you replace them in the new smug with pages. When you're ready to cut over to the new smug you can change the html-only galleries to unlisted; that way you have the content if you want or need it but it won't be visible on your site.

Thanks for your reasoning, Denise. Firstly, apparently blue is green in one of my parallel universes.

I swear I was seeing blue locked boxes, but on this gallery the content is green. You can see I began a test of my method by adding the HTML block above it.

Wouldn't creating new pages change all URLs for the entire site? I fear I have URLs spread too far and wide to want to lose their history on the web.

This is the page I'm working on, and I see the HTML is broken in public legacy mode right now.
http://www.joinrats.com/EarningTrust/RattieShuttle/15258357_HDgHVd

denisegoldberg · October 17, 2013

OK, I get it now! The box indicates gallery content and it can't be altered in the customizer. You can change the text in the gallery description and you can add photos to it.

I really think you will be better off using pages (not galleries) for that kind of content.

I also think you will be happier with one or more HTML content blocks instead of text blocks. Using the HTML blocks gives you the option of formatting the text.

You've migrated but not unveiled, right?
If that's the case why not create a new page to replace that gallery? Create a page, drag an HTML content block onto that page and place the text in the HTML side. Add CSS as needed to format the text. The HTML box has an HTML tab and a CSS tab - the screen shot below shows the box from a part of my Kaleidoscope page. You only have 4 photos in that gallery. Place them in an unlisted gallery and then add them to your page by adding a photo content block.

If you have a lot of pages that you need to build I believe you can put the CSS either in your theme or in a CSS box that you've placed on your entire site so you don't need to repeat the same CSS in multiple places.

If you have URLs out that will be broken then you should customize a 404 (not found) page for your site. You can easily build that page to include links to the content you think folks will look for. My 404 page is pretty simple because I didn't think I needed more. You can see it at http://www.denisegoldberg.com/nonexistent.

For tips on customizing a not found page see http://news.smugmug.com/2013/07/31/smug-tip-customize-your-404-search-page-and-more/.

--- Denise

ChancyRat · October 18, 2013

This is very valuable input Denise. I'm just stoppered by the idea of having all my historic URLs, gone.
And - I think I want galleries, not pages, because there will be photos and videos in most of them. Having managed a few HTML-only galleries with embedded photos in legacy (which is what you're suggesting in New), that was very hard to maintain. There's a wonderful aspect to galleries in terms of image/video management, for location and reorganization.

If you were hell-bent on keeping your historic URLs, would you do anything different than I described at the top of this thread?

denisegoldberg · October 18, 2013

ChancyRat wrote: »

This is very valuable input Denise. I'm just stoppered by the idea of having all my historic URLs, gone.
And - I think I want galleries, not pages, because there will be photos and videos in most of them. Having managed a few HTML-only galleries with embedded photos in legacy (which is what you're suggesting in New), that was very hard to maintain. There's a wonderful aspect to galleries in terms of image/video management, for location and reorganization.

If you were hell-bent on keeping your historic URLs, would you do anything different than I described at the top of this thread?

If you want to keep the URLs you're right, you will need to use (the same) galleries.
And you're right, if the galleries contain more than a few photos then galleries would be better than pages.

--- Denise

Blue blocks and HTML blocks, logic of fixing galleries

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