Help with Image Sequencing and File Order

Hello:

First of all, thank you in advance for your time and willingness to respond to my questions. I am new to Omeka and I have some questions about image sequencing on Omeka. We have collections in which we would like the images to be viewed in a specific order (mostly, chronologically by date of works). We have a few questions as to how we can control the order of the images viewed. As far as I can tell, two factors govern the order in which a user sees your images: the file name and the order of uploading the files. My first question is the following: what predominates: file name or order of uploads? Do we need to just focus on one and not the other?

I have an additional question. At our work, we have a collection of 200+ images of Raphael that I would like to make into a collection. What if I go to the trouble of renaming all the original Raphael images so they will show sequentially and I later find another 25 that I want to add to the collection. I don’t know at this point if I should use the reorder plugin or I can figit the numbering by interjecting an additional letter. Let’s say the original was raph001x.jpg. The added file could be raph001xa.jpg.

So, to summarize, we are trying to understand how Omeka sequences images and how we can control the order in which images are viewed by users. We would like to display the images in a specific order and interject new images into the existing order. I hope that was clear and again, I thank you for your help in better understanding how Omeka image sequencing works.

If you're talking about the files on a specific Item, the default order is generally governed by the order the files were added. However, you can freely drag the files into whatever custom order you want on the item's edit page.

If you're talking about how the Items are ordered, the default is also to order by the date they were added. You can use the Item Order plugin to specify a custom ordering, or you can use Omeka's sorting options to change the order to be based on another piece of metadata of your choosing (Once you have a URL that sorts the way you want, you can use the Navigation settings to replace the default items/browse link with your custom one).

Ive downloaded the Item Order plug in but it says it's an invalud plug in (I'm using 2.0.3) so I can't even try it. I'm only barely functional in php, so changing code for sorting options is out.

Is there any way to contact the Item Order Plug-in people to see if they'll update the plug in for use on 2.0?

The update of the Item Order plugin is moving along into internal testing, but I can't give a solid estimate of when it will be ready for public release.

Thanks Patrick!