Upgrade to Omeka Semantic is a plugin for Omeka Classic that allows to upgrade automatically your installation from Omeka 2 to Omeka S. It upgrades records, files, config, themes and some plugins.
Omeka S is a remastered, up-to-date and improved release of Omeka, built for the semantic web, multi-sites and multilingual. So, this plugin allows to use this new features without the mess-up of a manual upgrade process. The main point is to keep original metadata unchanged, but improved to take care of new features of Omeka S.
The original install of Omeka Classic is kept and not modified: it remains available. If the upgrade is fine for your digital library or your exhibit, generally with a new standard theme, simply modify the paths on your server.
A compatibility layer is available for themes with the module Upgrade from Omeka Classic, that is installed automatically too. The themes are restructured and upgraded, but custom functions may fail. In that case, use new themes, or use the template engine Twig via the module Twig, or contact me. Anyway, in all cases, the theme should be reviewed, because there will be visual glitches and fixes in most of the cases. This compatibility layer is needed only when an upgraded theme is used.
Of course, if a plugin doesn’t exist under Omeka S, it won’t be upgraded. Furthermore, a processor should be written to upgrade data. There are already such a processor for the most common plugins, that are integrated or have an equivalent module: Dublin Core Extended, Embed Codes, Exhibit Builder, Geolocation, More User Roles, Simple Pages, Social Bookmarking, Universal Viewer, Guest User, etc. If enabled, the modules will be automatically installed. For other plugins, contact me.
See the full list of plugins for Omeka 2 and matching modules for Omeka S, and all modules and themes that are already available for Omeka S.
- Ids of items
One important benefit against the standard upgrade process or via Omeka 2 Importer is that the id of items are kept, so the common urls publicly used on the web are not lost. The id of collections and files are lost. This is related to the fact that Omeka Semantic uses a single id for all resources.
Users are upgraded too, but they have to ask for a new password on the login page. The pages and exhibits keep their slugs.
Anyway, it’s always recommended you set your own single and permanent
identifiers that don’t depend on an internal position in a database. The term
Dublin Core Identifier is designed for that and a record can have multiple
single identifiers. There are many possibilities: named number like in a library
or a museum, isbn for books, or random id like with ark, noid, doi, etc. In
Omeka 2, they can be displayed in the public url with the plugin Clean Url.
Furthermore, the compatibility layer adds aliases for old urls items/show/#id
to the new format item/#id and redirects them to the items of the specified
site of Omeka S, and the same for collections, files and homepage.
- Automatic process and speed
A second benefit is that the process is fast and automatic. You don’t need to ask your IT department for a new server, or to process an initial setup, that is a little longer in Omeka S (even very simple) since there is no default site. Indeed, the config itself is upgraded. For example, the path to the php cli, a common question on the forum of Omeka forum, is kept.
This is mostly transparent to the admin and to the users: they won’t see anything change (if the theme is fully checked). Conversely, the curators will benefits from all the new features of Omeka S. The machines too: Omeka S is designed to share its resources larger and in a more standardized way than Omeka 2.
The last important benefit is that your site will respond visibly faster, especially when PHP 7 is used, since Omeka S is based on Zend 3 and Doctrine.
Uncompress files and rename plugin folder UpgradeToOmekaS.
Then install it like any other Omeka plugin and follow the config instructions.
IMPORTANT: Even if the original files and the original database are only read, backup your database AND your files before the process and check them before the process.
The plugin has been tested from v2.3.1, but it probably works with Omeka v2.2.2. Just change the setting in plugin.ini to try it. Nevertheless, it’s always recommended to upgrade the core, all the plugins and the theme to the last version.
You may need to upgrade your plugins to the current version. Only enabled and managed plugins are processed.
The process is automatic from an up-to-date Omeka install. Log in as a super
user, then simply click on "Upgrade" in the top admin bar, fill the short form,
click the Submit button, wait from a few tens of seconds, and click on the
provided url.
The urls of the main page and of the login page are provided. If the main page is broken, fix the theme or log in and change the theme to one of the official themes or use on upgraded official theme of Omeka Classic.
To add a new upgrader, simply add it in the directory /libraries/UpgradeToOmekaS/Processor
or use the filter upgrade_omekas. You can look in the upgrader Escher.php
for a basic upgrader.
The last update of this plugin install the last stable version of Omeka S and try to install the last version of the modules, when possible, but you may have to update the modules inside Omeka S.
In rare cases, the encoding of characters in Omeka S is not the good one. To fix it, run the following commands on the Omeka S database (via adminer, phpmysql, or in command line):
# IMPORTANT: Backup the Omeka S database first, even if you can redo the upgrade!
# Check conversion on the first 100 rows.
# The original character encoding should be checked (here "latin1").
SELECT id, value, CONVERT(BINARY CONVERT(value USING latin1) USING utf8mb4) AS conv FROM `value` WHERE CHAR_LENGTH(value) != LENGTH(value) LIMIT 100;
# WARNING: the following query works only one time: it will fail if executed a second time.
# You may have to set another original encoding (here "latin1").
UPDATE `value` SET value = CONVERT(BINARY CONVERT(value USING latin1) USING utf8mb4) WHERE CHAR_LENGTH(value) != LENGTH(value);
# To get all the rows to fix.
SELECT id, value FROM (SELECT id, value, CHAR_LENGTH(value) AS c, LENGTH(value) AS l, CHAR_LENGTH(CONVERT(BINARY CONVERT(value USING latin1) USING utf8mb4)) AS cc FROM `value`) AS x WHERE c != l AND c != cc;Or you can execute file fix_utf8mb4.sql directly, so all tables will be
processed. Note: only core tables are fixed currently, you must check the
specific tables.
The upgrade process follows these steps. All steps are automatic except the first and the last.
- IMPORTANT: backup your database and your files manually and check them.
- Optional: create manually the database if you want a separate one, else, the database will be shared with the one of Omeka Classic. This is not a problem, but currently, Omeka S doesn’t manage prefixes. Fortunately, there was one by default in Omeka 2 ("omeka_"). Furthermore, Omeka 2 creates tables with plural names (like "users") and Omeka S uses singular names ("user"), so even if the prefix was removed during install, there won’t be issue. Anyway, it’s recommended to create a separate database.
- Checks.
- rights to write in the specified directory
- version and config of Omeka
- version of plugins
- Set the site down, except for the super user.
- Fetch last release of Omeka S from Github, uncompress it and install it.
- Set parameters.
- new database or current one
- main settings
- Conversion of all Omeka Classic tables (users, records, plugins...) into the Omeka Semantic ones via simple mysql queries.
- Copy of files, hard links (recommended on linux servers), soft links or dummy files.
- Copy, reorganize and upgrade themes.
- Install the compatibility layer and upgraded plugins.
- Check manually main settings and parameters of each module of Omeka Semantic.
The site will be available automatically at the end of the process with the specified link.
Enjoy it!
Use it at your own risk.
It’s always recommended to backup your files and your databases and to check your archives regularly so you can roll back if needed.
See online issues on the plugin issues page on GitHub.
This plugin is published under the CeCILL v2.1 licence, compatible with GNU/GPL and approved by FSF and OSI.
In consideration of access to the source code and the rights to copy, modify and redistribute granted by the license, users are provided only with a limited warranty and the software’s author, the holder of the economic rights, and the successive licensors only have limited liability.
In this respect, the risks associated with loading, using, modifying and/or developing or reproducing the software by the user are brought to the user’s attention, given its Free Software status, which may make it complicated to use, with the result that its use is reserved for developers and experienced professionals having in-depth computer knowledge. Users are therefore encouraged to load and test the suitability of the software as regards their requirements in conditions enabling the security of their systems and/or data to be ensured and, more generally, to use and operate it in the same conditions of security. This Agreement may be freely reproduced and published, provided it is not altered, and that no provisions are either added or removed herefrom.
- Clean the utf8mb4 database encoding issue (add a function on each value, like for the user).
- Include translations of Omeka Classic.
- Check "todo" in the source of the plugin.
Current maintainers:
- Daniel Berthereau (see Daniel-KM on GitHub)
- Copyright Daniel Berthereau, 2017