Working with Omeka Classic

Here are a few tips and tricks that can help make sure you get the most out of the Omeka software.

• Item: Omeka’s basic building block, containing text, media, and/or metadata
• Collection: A group of items, typically sharing a common theme.

Creating Collections

This is an organizational tool: by creating collections now, you’ll be able to sort your items later. To create a collection, click “Collections” on your lefthand Omeka dashboard menu. Then, click the green Add a Collection button. On the Add a Collection page, give your collection a Title (you can leave all other boxes blank). If you want to add formatting to your text such as bolding or italics, check the box next to “Use HTML,” and more editing options will appear.

When you’re done, check the box next to “Public” and then click the green Add Collection button.

NOTE: You’ll see many fields when creating collections or items, but there’s no need to panic: almost all are optional and exist for archival purposes. Only fields with a * after them are required.

Creating Items

Omeka is a tool for curating artifacts. In this step, you’ll begin this curation by creating items. To create an item, click “Items” on your lefthand Omeka dashboard menu. Then, click the green Add an Item button. On the Add an Item page, give your item a Title and a Description (you can leave all other boxes blank). If you want to add formatting to your text such as bolding or italics, check the box next to “Use HTML,” and more editing options will appear.

Check the box next to “Public.” If you wish to add this item to a collection, select it from the dropdown menu under “Collection.”

If you wish to add images to your item, click the “Files” tab, then click “Choose File.” Follow the prompts to upload an image. To upload more images, click the green Add Another File button. These images will be displayed alongside your text when a viewer clicks the relevant point on your map.

If you wish to add tags to your item, click the “Tags” tab, then enter all desired tags in the text box, separated by commas. Remember to click Add Tag afterward.

When you’re done adding text, files, and tags, click the green Add Item (or Save Changes if you’re editing) button.

You can always find your list of items, with the option to edit each one, by clicking Items on your Omeka dashboard. From the Items page, you can also use the blue Search Items button to filter items by user or tag.

Clicking “Tags” on the Omeka dashboard will bring you to a list of all your tags. Click a tag’s name to edit it, or click the number to its left to view all items with that tag.

Editing You Omeka Site Menu

From your Omeka dashboard, click Appearance in the black bar at the top of the screen. Then click the Navigation tab.

This takes you to a checklist of links. Each checked link will appear on your home page’s menu. To edit a link’s label (name) or URL, click the small black arrow to its right.

To add a new link: fill in the Label and URL fields at the bottom of this page, and then click Add Link. You can reorder the menu by clicking and dragging the links. When you’re done, click the green Save Changes button.

If you’d rather have links on your menu to one or more specific exhibits, first pull up that exhibit’s public or full-screen view. Copy the URL from the address bar at the top of your browser. Paste it into the URL field on Appearance > Navigation, give it a label, click Add Link, and then Save Changes.

To use a specific exhibit as your home page:
On Appearance > Navigation, add a link to the public or fullscreen view of the map you wish to be the homepage (see the previous step). Then, click on the drop-down menu under “Select a Homepage” (to the right of the link checklist). Select the link you’ve just added. Click Save Changes to finish.

ImageMagick

Omeka requires the ImageMagick library in order to resize and generate thumbnails for your images. Louisiana State University provides ImageMagic for all accounts, but occasionally you will need to manually enter the server path to the utility. The setting for this is located under the Settings > General tab and the path to ImageMagick is /usr/bin

PHP-CLI

Some plugins including CSV Import and Neatline may need to execute code using the command-line version of PHP. If your plugin requires this it can be enabled by editing the config.ini file in your File Manager under application>config.

Navigate to the line that reads:

background.php.path = “”

Change it to the following:

background.php.path = "/usr/bin/php-cli"