• Where do I login? 
  • Go to https://digitalcollections.union.edu/login
    1. You will be prompted to enter your full email address (with @union.edu) and password. Upon first signing up as an Omeka user, you should have received an email that lets you create a password. 
    2. Once you are logged in, you will see a list of sites on the right hand side of the screen. Find the name of your site and click on the pencil icon to begin making edits to your site. 
• What is my site name? 
  • There are two names for your site; One is the system name found when you log into the backend and the other is the front facing or public website name as your visitors will see. You can distinguish the names as follows:
    1. The system name will usually be created and provided by someone from our team and will be labeled as type of site + name of class or project + the year. For example, "Faculty site: Your Name Fall 2021". This is what appears in the admin when you look for your site in the manage sites column. 
    2. Your public site name is what your visitors will see in the top banner when they visit your website. This can be changed at anytime under theme settings, which can be found in the left box when you go to edit your site. (see screen shot)
• How do I change the banner? 
  • Go to your site's Theme option (next to a paintbrush icon in a blue box) and it will be located underneath your site's name field. Here's a couple important points to keep in mind about choosing your own banner:
    1. Be sure to upload an image that is optimized for screen display - so no large resolution photos made for print (look for a resolution under 96 dpi). This will slow down your site's loading time if an image is much larger than it needs to be.
    2. Choose an image that is much wider than it is tall, so it fits nicely within the website's frame. 
    3. If you choose an image that is not yours (say you obtained it from Wikipedia), be sure to provide us with a URL along with image information like title, so  that we can give appropriate credit on the website. 

Image Management

• What's the difference between Media Gallery and Item/image? 
  • The difference will be how the images on your page are presented and linked. For example, when choosing to display images on your page, you can have them present as a gallery of images that don't link to anything further, or you can display items/images that can link to more information about that image. There is a lot of flexibility in how you can present items on a page in Omeka. Watch a video about the different ways you can display images here. Be sure to check out further instruction on our video page here.

• I'm having trouble getting dates to save to my items, and also actually using the timeline. 
  Check to make sure you have the following requirements for using the timeline & mapping module in place: 
  • 1. • Make sure that each item that you want on your timeline is assigned to an item set.
       • Make sure that item set is assigned to a resource template which contains a date field that is a numeric data type of interval or timestamp. There are a couple basic presets you can use, including "Timeline item" and "Timeline date range", which would be for a specific timestamp date and interval of time, respectively .  Our Digital Services team can help you set up a new resource template if you need more information in your item besides the basic title, description and date. 
       • >Make sure that you have added a location within the mapping tab of your item(s). Even if you don't need to show locations and just want a timeline, this current module cannot fuction unless you provide something on the map. 
       • Make sure that the item set you are using for your site is selected under the Resources option of your site. 
       • Once you have checked off the above, you should be able to create a page and use the page block "Map by attachments" or "May by query" to start using the timeline on your website. Please refer to this instructional video to learn more.