Backlight 4.1 is now available, packed with new features and improvements.
New! Pangolin Essay Module
Combine images and text to create photo essays! See below for complete details.
New! Metadata Editing in Backlight’s Publisher
In Backlight’s Publisher, it’s now possible to edit the displayed metadata for an image, including its title, caption, and the “metadata one” and “metadata two” slots. This is useful for making updates and corrections to existing images, or for providing metadata to images which have been stripped of metadata (such as when uploading from your phone).
Auto-refresh while editing albums
The Publisher now supports the same auto-refresh features as the Designer, allowing you to view saved changes immediately while eding your albums.
Improved Search
Searching across image titles and captions has been improved, we’ve added a new option that expands search to include all of an image’s metadata, including all outlets and metadata panel values.
Structured data / SEO improvements
Backlight Publisher now supports the new tokens Creator, CopyrightUrl/WebStatementOfRights and CreditLine, useful for Google’s structured data. These fields are also preserved when Backlight generates new images renditions during publishing.
More!
The 4.1 update includes many fixes, and maintenance-level improvements, as well as …
- adds new customization options for `blockquote` elements in Pangolin Page
- adds Recent Albums and Album Sets to the dashboard
- moves Special Links into a new page in the menu
- improves Backlight’s handling of Date/Time metadata fields
- improves the slideshow experience in Backlight’s Publisher
- updates the image uploader used when publishing via Backlight
For a more complete list of changes, access the changelog from the Backlight Modules page of your admin after performing the update.
Updating to Backlight 4.1
Because we’ve introduced a new module, updating from Backlight 4.0 to 4.1 is a multi-step process. It’s simple; you’ve just got to press the right buttons.
- In the Backlight admin, visit the Backlight Modules page.
- Click the “Update All Modules” button at the top of the page. This will update the existing modules, and Backlight will become aware of the new, uninstalled Pangolin Essay module.
- Upon finishing, click “Install All” under Backlight 4 to install the Pangolin Essay module.
ESSAYS in Backlight 4.1
Backlight 4.1 introduces the new Pangolin Essay module, a new type of album for creating photo essays. Basically, essays allow you to blend images and text to create a sort of narrative. It’s kinda like blogging; but to Backlight, an essay is just an album.
While some might still prefer the full blogging experience of WordPress, others may very well find that Pangolin Essay is everything they need to tell stories with Backlight.
Our latest tutorial video is everything you need to know about using Pangolin Essay.
You can also check out the essays I’ve written on my personal site.