Default Theme

The default theme is comprised of all the basic features you’ll need to publish your collection to the web, including search and browse functions, online exhibitions, finding aids, asset detail pages and more! A live demo of Pawtucket is available at http://demo.collectiveaccess.org/pawtucket/.

Out of the box, Pawtucket includes the following tools:

  • Access Control - You decide what gets published to the web at every level! Select content can also be made available behind a login, or for users at a specific IP address.
  • Browse - Find assets in your collection by keywords, subjects and controlled vocabularies, as well as dates, cross-table relationships and more.
  • Collection Browser - Like an interactive Finding Aid, allow your users to view complex collection hierarchies in an intuitive manner.
  • Contact Form - A customizable form that users can use to contact you by email.
  • Contribute Form - Allow users to contribute materials to your archive via a simple, customizable form.
  • Detail pages - Any Providence record can be published as a page in Pawtucket. Display media and information about assets in your collection, or people, places, subjects and more!
  • Document and Media Viewer - View, Pan and Zoom into media and documents in-browser.
  • Galleries - Showcase featured content and create online exhibition by easily publishing Sets to Pawtucket.
  • Lightbox - Allow your users to create personal Lightboxes for their own research. Users can bookmark items for later, add notes, create slideshows and share their Lightboxes with others.
  • Lists - Display simple lists of your collection assets by type.
  • Login and Registration - Put your Pawtucket installation behind a password, or require a login to view select content.
  • Reporting - Configurable PDF templates allow your users to download tear-sheets of collection items, galleries, Finding Aids and more.
  • Search - Find collection assets with simple or customizable advanced search forms.

You’ll notice that the default theme displays media, record titles, descriptions and other basic information from your collection records by default. However, if you want to display more complex metadata or make aesthetic changes to Pawtucket, you’ll need to create your own theme.

Everything in Pawtucket is customizable, and configuring your own theme is easy. Custom themes build off of the features available in the default theme - even the most complex custom themes use the default theme as their backbone. In fact, the theme you create will selectively override the areas of the default theme that you want to change (rather than overriding the default theme as a whole). This ensures that the base code is consistent across all installations, that your theme will receive necessary updates in the future without affecting the custom areas of your theme.

To begin, visit Defining Your Own Theme.