Digital UIC provides students, faculty, and staff of UIC the opportunity to register a domain and create a digital scholarly presence. Users can easily install open source applications like Scalar or Omeka.
With a Digital UIC site, there are a lot of applications from which to choose. It can be daunting to decide which application will work best for the project you have in mind. This section covers several popular applications used for digital scholarship and digital humanities projects, including a comparison chart and examples of digital projects using the different applications.
Application Comparison
Scalar
Omeka Classic
WordPress
Grav
Learning Curve
Medium
Medium-high
Medium
Medium-high
Strengths
Media-rich, long-form scholarship. Allows authors to create multiple "paths" through a text. Text and media are highly integrated.
Online exhibitions where metadata is an important component. Plugins available to create maps and timelines. Crowd-sourcing features.
Blogs, portfolio sites, short-form essay length scholarship. Many free or low cost templates make it easy to create a unique site without advanced web design skills.
Fast and flexible websites. Users have a high degree of control over design and structure of their site. Perfect for someone who wants to explore more advanced topics like Git in a user friendly interface.
Drawbacks and Challenges
Requires advanced web design skills to customize noticeably
Relatively rigid structure, limited site design with out advanced web design skills
More advanced features require 3rd party plug-ins that can be difficult to maintain. Lacks the ability to add detailed metadata to media.
Requires familiarity with Markdown, YAML, and Twig templating