Omeka RC4 is Released
On Friday the Omeka team hit a new milestone - the fourth release candidate of our web publishing software for collections. This release includes several noteworthy changes, that in the long run are going to make a huge difference to users installing the software:
Greater Database Flexibility
Thanks to the hard work of Kris Kelly, we’ve removed the Object Relational Mapper Doctrine from our core code, in favor of a custom solution that removes an unnecessary library and makes Omeka significantly faster.
The new version also doesn’t require PDO, but can support mySQLi as a substitute instead. For some users on shared hosts that don’t support PDO, this will come in handy.
Database prefixing allows you to have multiple Omeka installs running on a single database, which is once again important for users on shared hosting.
A New Plugin
We packaged Omeka with a “Dropbox” plugin I’ve been developing - it allows you to batch upload files to get your collection online faster than entering each item separately. I’ve found this to be incredibly useful when putting images online, and I’m sure others will find this helpful as well.
RSS for Syndication of everything
A flexible solution for the aggregation of items is now included in Omeka. XML and RDF outputs can also be given, for not only new items added to a collection, but search results as well. Plugins can hook into the feed class to add their own RSS feeds as well.
Learn More
We’re currently in private beta, but adding new testers with each release. To learn more, visit our website, and email us to sign up to be a beta tester.
I'm a digital humanist and graduate of American Studies, currently working as a web developer and