Nesting multiple Omeka installations under one Omeka install?

Hi,

My basic question is can you nest multiple Omeka installations under one Omeka installation?

In other words, we have several Omeka (differing versions) installs hosting different exhibits and are thinking about setting up an Omeka installation that would serve as the launch page for the other Omeka installs. This home Omeka would basically act as a descriptive gateway linking out to the other separate Omeka sites we have. Admin functions would stay with the individual Omeka installs.

Is this re-inventing the wheel, not possible, or should I just re-design our current static html page that lists the various Omeka and non-Omeka exhibits we have?

Appreciate anyone's thoughts on this harebrained idea.

Thanks in advance - Russ

Would this descriptive gateway need the functionality of Omeka - items, exhibits, collections?

You could make an Omeka install in which each project/Omeka site is an object (either a website or a custom item type), add tags and things and have each item link out to that site.

But if you want more of an index, perhaps that's overkill?

No, no items, exhibits, or collections. But your suggestion about making each site an object with tags, etc., and linking out sounds more like what we want to do.

We'll start with that approach.

Thank you much for the pointer!

Best-

What I've done for this is create a single-page, single-item exhibit for the external site and then added conditional statements to exhibits/browse.php in my theme to change the link construction based on the title. This gets a thumbnail, short description, and link on the browse exhibits page.

<br />
<?php foreach (loop('exhibit') as $exhibit): ?><br />
    <?php $exhibitCount++; ?><br />
    <div class="exhibit <?php if ($exhibitCount%2==1) echo ' even'; else echo ' odd'; ?>"></p>
<p>        <?php if (strpos(metadata($exhibit,'title'),"MYKEYWORD") == false): ?><br />
            <!--DO THE USUAL--></p>
<p>        <?php else: ?><br />
            <h2><a href="THE URL">THE SITE NAME</a></h2></p>
<p>            <?php if ($exhibitImage = record_image($exhibit, 'square_thumbnail')): ?><br />
                    <?php echo  "<a href="THE URL">" . $exhibitImage . "</a>"; ?><br />
            <?php endif; ?><br />
        <?php endif; ?><br />
    </div><br />
<?php endforeach; ?><br />

Hi Sheepeeh,

Thanks for the code! We haven't started yet, but this looks like it will save us a ton of time.
Very kind of you to chime on this.
Best -

Hi Sheepish,

Was wondering which version of Omeka you're using, and which theme.

Also would it be possible to get the link to your Omeka site were you have your code implemented

Thanks -

We are using Omeka 2.2 (we'll probably upgrade to 2.3 soon) and a customized fork of the Seasons theme. The most recent version of the theme is available here.

Unfortunately, the external exhibit I referenced has not been launched publicly yet, but you can see the most recent version of the theme in action with our regular exhibits.