Introduction / Blank Page While Trying To Install

Greetings. Have been really excited to have discovered Omeka! :) At the library where I work, we started out using CONTENTdm. I thought CONTENTdm was ridiculously expensive and so my boss had me investigate Dspace and Greenstone. I looked at Dspace minimally, but I became pretty intimate with Greenstone. I made Greenstone do everything our CONTENTdm site did, functionally and visually. The "higher ups" were happy and I was proud of my work. If anyone cares to see it, it can be viewed at:

digital.lib.cwu.edu

I have tried to install Omeka on my test server at work and on my personal website hosted at iPower. I have followed the instructions to a "T" (and re-read them many times) and when I browse to my installation (both sites), I just get a blank page. Even the html source is completely blank. The only thing I can think of in the instructions that I didn't do (and I admittedly don't understand) is the part about "Make sure the database you create has a collation of 'utf8_unicode_ci' and a 'utf8' charset." How do I do this? I have installed tons of "LAMP" apps and never come across anything like this.

My test server info is as follows:

• FreeBSD 7.0-STABLE
• Apache 2.2.9 (installed from port)
• mod_rewrite installed and enabled
• PHP 5.2.6 (installed from port)
• MySQL 5.1.26 (installed from port)

I didn't see anything any my apache-error log that was helpful or relevant.

Looking forward to checking out Omeka!! :D
- Gavin

My apologies. I skimmed the board for the answer to my question before I posted, but I wasn't thorough enough. I found the information about the mysqli requirement in alexan6's post entitled "Clemson Library installation". Thank you.

Could this be added to the "System Requirements" section on the "How To: Preparing to Install" page, please? I believe it's essential information and would help many people.

Omeka looks great!!!!!! Nice, clean, simple interface. Wonderful! I have a really good feeling about it. :)

- Gavin

You're absolutely right that mysqli should be listed on the Requirements page. Thanks for the vote of confidence, and let us know if you have any more issues.

Btw, the stuff about unicode collation and charset in your database helps if you are using non-latin alphabets in your database. It's quite easy to set if you use phpMyAdmin to create your database. I think maybe some LAMP apps leave it implied that people will know this if they need to, but we make it explicit in order to avoid problems with internationalization in the future. Hope that helps!