We were very excited yesterday to see that the great team at Omeka had rolled out the official 1.0 version of Omeka S (in addition to a gorgeous new website that highlights both S and Classic versions of the software). We’ve been following the project with anticipation for quite awhile now and we know a few users have installed the software manually while it was in the alpha/beta stages. An installer has always been on our radar but we wanted to allow the Omeka team to provide a clear line of support and feedback loop for their product while it was still in beta via their forums (which continue to be a wonderful resource for support of the software with the developers very active there). With the software reaching maturity now and being publicized more widely it was time to make it easy for any Reclaim user to give it a go.
So what is Omeka S? If you’re familiar with Omeka for exhibits and one-off projects you’ll find that Omeka S is a better approach for managing multiple repositories. You have one set of code, plugins (or modules as they’re called now), and themes that are shared across the sites you create. In many ways this will remind you of WordPress Multisite versus standalone WordPress. For institutions or organizations tasked with managing more than one Omeka install this opens the door for an easier workflow. And Omeka has rebuilt their codebase from the ground up.
As of today the installer has begun rolling out to all of our servers (both shared hosting as well as institutional Domain of One’s Own systems). You’ll find installation incredibly straightforward. Simply choose the location you want to install to and fill out a few brief fields setting a name, email, and password and you’re off to the races. Here’s a quick screencast showing what that looks like:
Not ready to run it on your own domain yet? Omeka has provided a sandbox environment for you to play in so you can test the software without setting up any accounts of your own.
We could not be more pleased to continue supporting CHNM and the Omeka team as well as the larger DH community by making this available. Give it a shot and let us know what you think!
