PF Enterprise FAQ
Common questions about setting up and maintaining a PF Enterprise site.
Umbraco & FTP Access
Umbraco: http://pages.photofinale.com/umbraco/
FTP: ftp://pages.photofinale.com
Your credentials for both will be provided by your account manager.
Content Cache
Changes to content made within Umbraco or to files in your FTP directory can take some time to show up on the site due to caching.
Type Cache Duration Changes to Umbraco Content Up to 60 Minutes Changes to FTP Content Up to 15 Minutes
To facilitate development, you can point your site to our sandbox server, which only caches Umbraco content for 1 minute. This makes rapid-fire change-and-test cycles much easier.
To set this up, you will need to edit your HOSTS file to create an alias URL for your site.
If your Photo Finale site address is dealer-name.photofinale.com or www.dealer-name.com, you want to add an entry to your HOSTS file (replacing "dealer-name" with your specific site name):
65.246.16.150 dealer-name.pfsandbox.com
You'll now be able to hit the sandbox version of your site at any time by using that address (http://dealer-name.pfsandbox.com).
(Note: When you first hit your site on the sandbox server there may be a 1-2 minute delay while your site's data is initially loaded into memory.)
CSS Styling
We strongly recommend that you provide an appropriate css namespace scope for your styles to ensure they do not conflict with the default Photo Finale styling.
In practice, this simply means placing all of your custom content in a <div> with a unique parent class name, for example:
<div class="dealer-name">
[ CUSTOM CONTENT ]
</div>
Then each style defined in your CSS file should use that parent selector to define the styles. Setting the font-size of the <legend> element, for example will look like:
.dealer-name legend {
font-size: 16px;
}
Your style sheets will always be included after the default Photo Finale style sheets, so it is therefore possible for you to override any of the default PF styling by omitting the .dealer-name scope, for example:
legend {
font-size: 16px;
}
We recommend against overriding the default Photo Finale styling. Lucidiom cannot take responsibility nor provide engineering resources to help diagnose or debug problems caused by overrides to the default styles. Ensuring that the default styling is compatible with all supported browsers on OS X and Windows is enough fun for us already!
Reserved Page Names
The following names are reserved by Lucidiom and should not be used as page or folder names within Umbraco. This list may change from time to time.
- account
- addphotos
- ccvinfo
- changepassword
- checkout
- confirmation
- create
- default
- forgotpassword
- get
- getstarted
- guest
- home
- link
- members
- membershipinfo
- migrateuser
- mycart
- mycollections
- myfeeds
- myorders
- myphotos
- orderhistory
- photo
- photos
- photofeed
- prepaidplans
- pricelist
- prints
- projects
- share
- shop
- signin
- signout
- signup
- signupcomplete
- startsharing
- terms
- trackmyorder
- trackorder
- transferconten
- upgrade
- user
JavaScript Libraries
Photo Finale includes a number of JS libraries. Umbraco content that includes these same libraries (or different versions of them) will likely cause conflicts and should be avoided.
- ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.2/jquery.min.js
- ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jqueryui/1.8.19/jquery-ui.min.js
- json2.js
- jquery.fancybox-1.3.4.js
- jquery.blockui.js
- jquery.linq.js
The versions included are updated regularly. We'll endeavor to keep this page up-to-date, but you can always verify by simply doing a View Source on one of your pages in PF Enterprise.
Customer Sign-In
There are several methods available to hook up a "Sign In" link to
- Method 1 - CSS:
Give your <href> an html id of "signInLink" and class of "no-user signin iframe".
- Method 2 - JavaScript:
The following Javascript call will connect your Sign In link to the appropriate action.
PF.loginDialog(<jquerySelector>);
JavaScript Client Objects
PF Enterprise provides a pair of JavaScript objects (PF and OrderSummary) that are available to be used in Umbraco pages and PageParts.
PF.user.isAuthenticated : bool
PF.user.numberOfSavedProjects : number
OrderSummary.confirmation : int
OrderSummary.subTotal : number
OrderSummary.discount : number
OrderSummary.tax : number
OrderSummary.shipping : number
OrderSummary.total : number
OrderSummary.balanceDue : number
PF.showError( message );
PF.blockPage( );
PF.unblockPage( );
PF.blockUI( selector );
PF.unblockUI( selector );
PF.silverlight.show( );
PF.silverlight.hide( );
jQueryUI Usage
If you plan to use jQueryUI in your Umbraco content, please note that we provide a base set of jQueryUI styles. You should plan to provide overrides for all of our default stylings. Contact us for additional details.
Tips
- Typekit: If you use Typekit for the fonts and you can see the site make the font switch from a default to your special font, you are experiencing "FOUT" = flash of unstyled text. You can add code to the stylesheet not to load the page until the font is loaded. More info: http://help.typekit.com/customer/portal/articles/6852-controlling-the-flash-of-unstyled-text-or-fout-using-font-events
- Put a ‘My Projects’ button in even for anonymous users. They're cookie based. Tied to the user's browser. Just like the anonymous user's shopping cart.
- Use relative links. Relative links are best. If you need it to a link to a secure page like ‘checkout’ then add the class=”secure” attribute to the anchor element. (or sign in)
- Linking to products/groups. Use short links like shop/photo-books instead of the direct links generated from Lab 50
- Newsletter signup. html can’t have a <form> within a <form>. The site is already wrapped in a <form> so any others get tossed out. The submit would need to be scripted or pop something up.
Flushing the Cache in MyLab after an Umbraco Publish
After making a change and Publishing the change in Umbraco, to complete the publish the cache must be cleared through mylab.lucidiom.com
into myLab and flush their Umbraco cache.
Clearing the Cache
-Log into mylab.lucidiom.com using your Lab 50 Dealer Crednetials.
-Go to Store Management
-Select the Option Cahce on the left side.
-Click on the Flush button.
Note:
Effects of Clearing the Cache and Previewing Changes
Umbraco content is still cached locally on each web server for one hour. This means that the changes will not show on the production Photo Finale site for up to one hour after the central cache is flushed via myLab.
However, dealers can preview and test the Umbraco changes sooner by accessing the sandbox version of their site. https://*TheirSiteName*.pfsandbox.com.
The sandbox site will fetch fresh Umbraco content from the central cache every minute.