I was finally able to migrate all of the Omeka items from the first version of the archive to the new version that is tied to the Scalar project and WordPress blog.  Earlier in the semester, I conducted extensive research on finding other themes in Omeka that would allow me to customize the look of the archive without having to do a lot of backend coding work.  I found the Customeka theme to be exactly what I needed in order to adapt the look of the project to mirror Scalar’s layout, which offers fewer options to adapt the aesthetics of the site.

This all worked well in theory until I began migrating the items from one archive to the other.  While the landing page that I had designed looked like I wanted, the items page was a jumble of text.  In order to customize the landing page to look as I wished, it changed the scale of the font in the items and collections pages.  There was no way to change one without the other.  Apparently, Customeka isn’t as customized as it seems.  I had to go back to the drawing board.

I began playing around with other themes that are offered in the standard Omeka install and settled on the Thanks, Roy theme.  The theme did not meet my needs when I originally designed the first version of the archive, but apparently, RRCHNM released a new version in February that makes it easier to customize colors and type styles.  Coupled with a greater understanding of Omeka myself, I was able to manipulate the standard Omeka theme to meet my aesthetic needs.

I like how Omeka is working for me as an archival repository and feel I’ve made progress as a user and designer within my modest level of expertise using the tool.