I spread my influence on the Web even more (subdomains, Omeka, and the Internet)

Today, I looked at Omeka. We created another subdomain, installed Omeka Classic, and then booted up some content. The content was just some images from Digital Grinnell (an intiative, that, by the way, I didn’t know existed. It’s super cool).

Here is the link if you wish to take a look: https://www.exhibits.davidnguyen.sites.grinnell.edu/cms/

The Vivello training today was setting that up and learning how Omeka works. Some highlights were downloading plugins and themes from online and learning how to use cPanel’s File Manager to import and extract those files directly in the backend of cPanel.

I like this type of hands-on training. I suppose their objective is to train a batch of students with relative familiarity with these tools. Not a bad idea. I feel like I could at least show them through the process. My roommate is an Studio Art major. Omeka could be fairly useful for him.

They want to know about the experience of learning Omeka. I’d say that it feels like a step back into the past. It’s a little more old-fashioned, and now that I know what it is, I’m recognizing how many old libraries and museums used it. It is very oriented towards display, whether that be art, images, or text. I feel like it would be a good place to display academic writing, if I needed to. For example, I might post my research papers, essays, articles, through that platform. Or perhaps it’d be great for long-form blog content. I think quite a few conferences use Omeka for their conference proceedings websites. I’d like to look further into what affordances Omeka offers over something like WordPress, which I think is more popular.

There is a certain friendliness from these old-fashioned website platforms. I feel like most people don’t bother to look into this side of the Internet. Matter of fact, the distinction between Web and Internet and Net and etc, etc– well, that distinction is often not made. I used those terms interchangeably. There’s a huge difference though, in intent and meaning and purpose.

This might be the topic of our next blog post!