Back Lot Website Editing - Back Lot Productions, Inc.

Data Types

The site defines several custom post types in addition to Post and Page.

Post: as there is no blog, we do not use posts of post_type “post.” (Don’t you just love WordPress naming?) There is a single post with content from the About page that is defined because some bots like to slurp up feeds.
Page: The primary posts of post_type “page” are Home, About, Media, and Contact. The main content and sidebar content are treated backwards from the usual WordPress structure. See “Page/Project Layout” below for details. There are also simple pages for a sitemap and privacy policy, linked only from the footer menu.
Project: There is very little content associated with projects. Each project is associated with a set of images, to be displayed as a gallery in the main content area, and one or more quotes, to be displayed in the left sidebar. The primary complication is how projects are hooked into the top “Portfolio” dropdown menu. See “Editing Projects” below for details.
Quote: Quotes are testimonials from clients, to be displayed in the left sidebar of the Home page and some projects. See “Handling Quotes” below for details.
PR: The “pr” post_type defines an article or other item to be displayed on the Media page.

Page/Project Layout

The page structure is not conventional, as the graphic design placed most textual content in the left sidebar, while most often the right main column just shows a gallery of project images.

For this reason the main Editor box is used to edit the left sidebar content of pages and projects, which the Excerpt field holds any content that needs to appear in the main (right) column.

Logo and Accent Colors

The logo in the upper left corner is a transparent overlay. Behind it is a solid color, defined in the “Project Configuration” meta box in the editing pages for the pages and projects post_types.

There are actually two accent colors, both defined using hex codes, e.g., #f1a329. The first is used for the background color under the logo, the square bullet for the active section of the header menu, and the 3px top border on the footer section.

If that color is strong (dark) enough, it is also used as a hover color to highlight the name of the active page, or as a static highlight color for the active project category and project. If it’s too light to be legible as small text, a second darker hex color is defined for the menu highlights. The easiest way to see what I’m talking about is to play with it. :)

The Media and About pages are exceptions. Each is assigned a color as a fallback, but they actually have a texture image (e.g., snakeskin) behind the logo. The images for those two page headers are hard-coded in the theme.

Handling Quotes (Testimonials)

Quotes are displayed in the left sidebar. The quote title is used only for quick identification; it are not displayed. The body of the quotation is edited in the main editing area of the quote. The citation details (client name and title or role) are set in the “Quote Configuration” meta box below the main editor.

Each project can optionally be associated with one or more quote. To assign a quote to a project, you need to edit the project. See “Editing Projects” below.

The Home page rotates through several quotes using little arrows. Just to be inconsistent, to add a quote to the home page rotation, you need to edit the quote, not the page, and assign it the category “home feature.”

Editing Projects

Each project has a photo gallery in the main content block. The left sidebar is used for optional quotes (see above).

To add gallery images, upload the image files as attachments. You can do this in the project editing screen by using the “Add Media” button and then convincing it not to display the media, or you can add it in the Media Library and then attach it to the correct project using the “Uploaded to” column there. To change the order, edit each image and set the order in the “Basic Info” meta box. I usually number them as 10, 20, 30, etc., so that I can reorder one without having to shuffle other images up or down.

The current site is from 2012 and doesn’t adjust for screen size (no responsive sizing or mobile support). So each image is always displayed in a 630 x 420px box. All the original images through 2015 were resized in Photoshop before uploading. For the recent additions, I uploaded full-sized image files so that they won’t have to be replaced if/when the site is redesigned with larger graphics.

You may need to add white space around a logo

Editing Header Menu

Media Page

Each entry is a PR item, usually an industry article. Required fields include article title, source (publication title), and publication date. The date is not displayed but is used for sorting the items from newest to oldest.

Optional fields include the article’s URL or the post ID for a downloadable attachment (e.g., PDF). For scanned items, one or more images can be attached to the PR post. You can also enter the article into the WordPress editor box, with images and formatting as desired.

Clicking on the article title (in green) pops up an overlay displaying the item on the Back Lot site as formatted text, an image, or a sequence of images. Tiny icons below the item link to an online source (URL) or a PDF download, if available.