Caution: making the wrong changes to your TTG-BE database can mess up your site. If you’re not comfortable with this and you need help in cleaning up Publisher problems, post to the TTG forum and ask Ben for help.
If using Backlight, see the updated version of this post.
So you’ve deleted a Publisher created Album via FTP and now all sort of weirdness is happening. First thing to know, and at this point it’s for future reference: only delete albums and album sets from Publisher. If you delete them via FTP, the database doesn’t know that and thinks that those albums and sets are still there.
To fix the problems related to deleting albums and album sets outside of Publisher, you need to also delete them in the database. It’s pretty easy to do, but once again I’m going to caution you to not make any additional changes as that could lead to headaches, grief, and possibly a world devouring singularity.
To access the database, first log into TTG-BE. Once there click on the phpLiteAdmin link.
This will take you to the database login. The default password is “admin”.
Next, in the upper left, click on the publisher/master.sq3 link.
Next, click on the album link.
You’ll be presented with a list of all the albums and album sets managed by Publisher. Find the albums or sets you previously deleted via FTP and click on the red delete link. You can tell whether an entry is an album or an album set by looking in the type column. You’ll also see the slug, title, and much more information.
Again, if you’re not comfortable with this, post to the TTG forum so Ben can help you out.
I’ve also found it incredibly useful to have a test site in a sub-domain. With a test site, you can play around and try things without fear of messing up your main site. More on using a sub-domain for testing here.