Pages, Menus and Forms

You have installed Backlight, and you're ready for next steps.

Let's begin by quickly touring your new website.

In a separate browser tab or window, visit yourdomain.com, that being whatever location at which you have installed Backlight.

On landing, you will see the default Home page, displaying your site title and a "Welcome" message, followed by some dummy text.

The navigation will include links to Galleries, About, Contact and Search.

At this point, the Galleries link will yield an error; this is normal. On the other pages, you will find dummy text. Feel free to explore, and let's move on when you're ready.

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Back to Backlight's admin, let's dig into content.

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Create or Edit Pages

In the menu, go to Designer => Pages. Here you will find a list of existing pages.

To create a page, click "Create New Page". Set a page name and identifier; if the page is to be your Home page, then set Index Page to "yes".

To edit an existing page, click "Design" to enter the page designer. In the designer, you may author page copy using HTML or Markdown syntax (see Writing Copy in Backlight), or you may add an album, album set or contact form to the page.

To delete an existing page, click the page name, then "Delete" on the subsequent page. After deleting a page, you will need to manually remove any link to that page from your menu sets.

Create or Edit Menus

To create a new Menu Set, or edit the existing site navigation, go to Designer => Menu Sets.

You may click "Design" to edit the Default menu, or "Create New Menu Set" to build a new menu. In either case, you will be taken to the Design Menu Set page. If setting up Backlight for the first time, edit the Default menu.

Multi-level menus are supported.

The menu creator should be fairly straightforward.

• Click "Add" to create a menu item.
  • Click "Add" on any menu item to add a child item.
  • Click "Remove" on any item to remove that item.
    • Removing an item will also remove its children.
• You may drag items to reorder them within their level; grab the icon in the top-right corner.

Menu items may be linked in a variety of ways. Set "Link to" as one of the following:

• Page
  • allows you to select a created page from a list.
• Album
  • allows you to select a published album from a list.
• Album Set
  • allows you to select a published album set from a list.
• URL
  • allows you to manually enter an address.
    • URLs beginning with "http" or "https" will be used as-is.
    • URLs beginning with "/" will be used as-is.
    • otherwise, your input will be appended to the Site URL in Backlight's settings.
• Noninteractive
  • creates an unlinked item, used as a parent heading for a child menu.

"Save" when finished.

Create or Edit Contact Forms

Go to Designer => Contact Forms. Here you will find a list of existing forms, including the default contact form appearing on the default Contact page.

You may create new contact form, or you may Edit or Delete an existing form.

Edit Contact Form

Name

Give your form a recognizable name.

Invitation

The invitation is a block of text that will appear above your form. Use this as a call to action, e.g. "To get in touch via email, fill out the form below!"

Enable reCAPTCHA

Includes Google's reCAPTCHA as a part of your form to prevent spam submissions. See Google reCAPTCHA Spam Protection for details.

Extra Fields

All contact forms include Name and Email fields. You may create additions form fields here.

Using Your Contact Form

To use a contact form, it should be inserted onto a page. Go to Designer => Pages in the menu, and edit a page. Scroll down to the section titled "Insert Contact Form". Turn this on, then select the desired form from the list.