Chose a New Site Design and customization of single galleries

Lille Ulven · October 10, 2015

Hi all

I am just working on a new site design with a new template...but I either haven't found it or it does not exist:
I would like to make all the customizations to single galleries that I need to make. (Headlines, html-fields and such things that apparently aren't specific to one gallery/page and not common shared with other galleries.)
I just cannot seem to figure out how to do it. Yes, I have searched through the help pages and google...but came up empty. So I am starting to wonder if that is possible?

After all when I reveal the new design I want to reveal a complete design and not one that is "work in progress"...

Could someone help me out and point me into the right direction, please?

Thanks in advance and a great weekend to all of you.

Lille Ulven

Richard · October 10, 2015

I'm not sure that I fully understand what you are looking for, but these are your choices: You can add HTML and CSS to all galleries or to individual galleries. After you add something to "just this gallery" it will no longer inherit new changes you make at the "all galleries" level. There is no mechanism to apply a template to just a few galleries--you'll have to do that one at a time, I'm afraid. The best approach is to add the most frequently used stuff at the "all galleries" level, then tweak or remove it from individual galleries as needed. You can do this little by little saving your changes as you go without publishing them. When you have all the galleries set up to your liking, you can then publish the changes all at once, so there's no need to have a work in progress problem.

Lille Ulven · October 10, 2015

Unfortunately you didn't quite get me, Richard, so I need to come up with a better explanation of what I want to do

When you hit on Customize -> Choose a New Site Design (and have a working site already in place which you basically want to replace with the new design once that is finished) you can choose a new template for your site moving the header, changing the look of the start page and adding some settings to all galleries.
Now my galleries have some customized headers which I would like to keep (or for that matter take with me into the new design). But I haven't found anything that lets me customize these gallery pages like I can with an already published Site Design.

So I wonder if I am just temporarily blind and this possibility exists somewhere somehow, or if I really am forced to make the final customizations after the new design template is finally published. The later would not be as nice...as it would be work in progress for some time to come.

Thanks for all help

Lille Ulven

Richard · October 11, 2015

Ah, OK, now I think I understand the problem. Sadly, I don't have an answer--I just published my new site a couple of weeks ago and I'm in no hurry to change its design

. It sounds like what you're saying is that the new site design option forces you to publish an incomplete product before you are given the chance to customize it to taste. If this is so, it's a serious drawback for anyone with customizations, though I suppose it could still be useful for people using nothing more than standard SM templates.

I agree that complete site redesign and customization before publishing is desirable.

Lille Ulven · October 11, 2015

Richard wrote:

It sounds like what you're saying is that the new site design option forces you to publish an incomplete product before you are given the chance to customize it to taste. If this is so, it's a serious drawback for anyone with customizations, though I suppose it could still be useful for people using nothing more than standard SM templates.

Yes, that's what I meant to say.

It is indeed desirable and I am still hoping that someone will come forward and tell me that it is already implemented but I just missed out on that function...

Lille Ulven · October 20, 2015

Just for update: I have contacted the support team and found out that this function I have been describing here is indeed not implemented.
Unfortunately I am out of votes so at this point in time I cannot update the official feature request page with a new request (unless giving up on other requests/votes)

Best regards

Lille Ulven

leftquark · October 22, 2015

Hi Lille,
I've worked on new Designs for customers before without actually publishing them. You can take advantage of the "Preview" button to work on the new Design without actually publishing it. Alternatively, I would occasionally "Publish" the new design for just a few seconds, then switch back to my old Design. I realize it's not ideal but it is possible. The one thing to keep in mind is that while you can add New Content blocks "All Galleries" and "All Folders", if you change Gallery Styles or change "Pages" around, they'll be impacted in all Designs.

Lille Ulven · October 23, 2015

leftquark thanks for your response. I do know (and have done so already) how to fix the "all" stuff in the new design, the trouble is that I have single gallery fixes, which I need to get over too. Like titles and occasionally bottom texts like here: http://www.lilleulven.com/Information/Publications/Calendarpreviews/Newzealand-square.

And unfortunately for me - as it means manually setting it up again - some things like the entire-page menu settings do not transfer to new designs.

So it would really be super useful to be able to modify a new design until the very last bit is fitting and than reveal it, rather than having to fix it afterwards. Considering that someone might be looking at my page while I am doing the kind of switching from old to new and back again you suggested ... it is not an option for me either (actually that would probably be worse than having to fix all galleries manually afterwards). So I suppose I have to clear out a weekend and then reveal and quick fix everything...meaning I need a good to-do list where I just can copy & paste stuff, I suppose.

Well not during the next two weekends...

Lille Ulven

Richard · October 23, 2015

Lille,

You probably already know about this, but on the off chance you don't, you can easily develop a check list by using Nick Sherlock's backup extension for Chrome. It crawls your entire site and records your customizations.

I agree that SM ought to provide a true and complete sandbox for new design, and frankly, I'm puzzled at why they don't.

Lille Ulven · October 23, 2015

Richard, yes I do know about Sherlock's backup and its possibilities but thanks anyway

And I agree with you sandboxing entire new designs would be a cool thing to have...so would other things like being able to "compress" the menu settings when you are building/updating your menu, so that only the menu parts are fully displayed that you need to access to place your next entry. But I bet they have other features in mind that will blow out our minds

Chose a New Site Design and customization of single galleries

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