In the Works: A New Omeka Release
- Jim Safley
- 07.08.2008
After four months in public beta Omeka has grown into a useful and productive tool for many individuals and institutions. But, having workshopped the software with our many stakeholders (including our partners at the Minnesota Historical Society), and having learned many things from our active user base, we are now ready to go to the next level. In the next few months we will be rewriting a good portion of the Omeka code base, to make it faster, more flexible, and easier to develop. Expect big things from us, including:
- A new, more robust and flexible data model
- A new, more usable and attractive exhibit builder
- A new, easier-to-use theme API
- A new, easier-to-use plugin API
- Upgrades to the core software
- Automated data migration
We hope that you stick around to see this new release. In the meantime, feel free to continue developing in the current version of Omeka. We promise the transition will be near seamless.
Christine Sell
July 16th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
I am a grants officer at cleveland state university, cleveland ohio and i wonder if omeka is only operable with linux? we have a project that might benefit from being able to use this software, but we do not run linux.
Jim Safley
July 21st, 2008 at 11:09 am
Hi Christine. Omeka is only tested in Linux and OS X, so we make no guarantees for other operating systems. Thankfully PHP, MySQL, and Apache (the technologies we require) are made to be platform independent, so there is a chance that Omeka works on Windows. We hope to guarantee compatibility in the future.
Jerry Yarnetsky
July 22nd, 2008 at 11:59 am
This sounds great. Data migration will be a HUGE help to us as we’re wanting to move away from ContentDM.
I passed this post to our digital projects team, but now they’re all asking me “what do they mean by ‘in next few months’”
In the “ideal world” what is the late date for a release goal… October? December?
Y’all are doing a great job! Thanks you!
Dave Lester
August 2nd, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Sorry we didn’t get back to you sooner. The target date to release an alpha version of the next Omeka version is early September, with a subsequent polished release after testing is complete on those changes.