https://frogsthroughhistory.omeka.net/
For my final project, I did a digital exhibit using Omeka on the depiction of frogs throughout various stages in history. In particular, I was focusing on frogs as depicted in mythology, frogs as depicted in Middle Age literature and culture, and frogs as depicted in the history of medical study. Those topics are all rather broad, so I limited myself to two examples for each category, as otherwise I could have been researching forever. I have seen sites like WordPress used to create digital exhibits before, but Omeka describes itself specifically for that intent, so I was interested to see how different the process would be when using a tool dedicated to exactly what you were intending to do.
Omeka is a paid platform and offers a free/trial version, however, I could tell right away the differences between the example sites and the functionality of a site using the trial plan. It provides almost all of the tools you need to begin uploading items and establishing collections, however, the basic out-of-the-box version of Omeka did not have all of the tools I had been wanting. I installed two plugins offered by Omeka—which, frankly, I think would be much better utilized if they were simply already included in the website’s functionality—to allow me to create simple pages within Omeka as well as to create “exhibits.” While I consider the whole website to be one exhibit, the exhibits plugin allowed me to create more clear separation between the collections as well as allowing me to add introductory text to the collections as well as to each of the items I was including within them. That may be possible without the exhibit plugin, possibly through manual coding, but I could not for the life of me find a built-in way to do so.
As for the visual customization of Omeka, it gives you a few options of layouts that you can then change the colors of, but the free plan did not give you much more than that. Someone who is better at coding than I am could probably have altered the visuals further, but I rather liked the look of the default layout and was satisfied with just changing the style sheet for the website for a different one that is also provided by Omeka.
Everything was very easy to understand and manage in terms of adding and describing the items, but if I had to choose something to be what I struggled with most, it was the layout of the Omeka admin dashboard. It is mostly alright, because the vast majority of what you are changing or editing is very easy to find, but for some things like more detailed website functionality or changing the layout of the menu, the options are buried behind things that do not even seem to be clickable at first glance. Any new software or tool takes some getting used to, and it was easy to adapt to, but it was a bit difficult trying to guess which options would be under which
Overall, I think Omeka could be an incredible resource for someone looking to create a basic collection of items in relation to a specific theme. It leaves a little to be desired by itself, but when you begin browsing the free Omeka-created plugins you can add to the website, more possibilities open themselves up and allow the site to become much more customizable.