Dealing with Omeka updates

I have made several customizations to our Omeka site. I see there is a major version update and I think it is probably time to update. However, I fear all my customizations will be lost. I am a librarian, not a developer, and wondering if there are ways to update without losing all these customizations.

Please advise,
Sophie

Sophie,

The real question would be if these customizations were to core files or plugins and theme that would not be effected. In general, applications like WordPress, Drupal, Omeka, etc. recommend you do not make changes to the core code of the application because any customizations will break when upgraded. If you customize a theme or plugin, they may also break when updated, but updating them may not be necessary when you update the core files. I would definitely specify the customizations you made on the Omeka forums, given they will know best, an see what folks there think.

Best,
Jim

Thanks, Jim, an Omeka developer tells me he doesn’t think that it would affect the changes I made. Here is his response:

I don’t think any changes to core would affect those. You would want to make sure that you don’t overwrite your theme or plugins with any new releases, of course. I’m only a little uncertain about the script that was run to eliminate blurry images, but if that only touched the files themselves it should be fine.

Can you tell me how I perform the update so that I don’t overwrite my themes or plugins?

Thanks,
Sophie

Sophie,

The updates that are pushed through Installatron would only contain what is included in a default Omeka install so the default themes (default, berlin, and seasons) and plugins (Coins, ExhibitBuilder, SimplePages). Anything custom that you added would not get overwritten there.

If you do want to manually upgrade instructions on that are at Upgrading - Omeka Classic User Manual but it’s pretty intensive versus letting Installatron do the heavy lifting for you. Installatron does take a backup that can be reverted if anything goes wrong.