Universal viewer asking for login on Item page

Omeka S Modules
1

Hello friends!

We have a problem with the Universal Viewer not loading and displaying items for public (not logged-in) users on item pages. We’d like it to do so. Here’s an example of such an item page on our site: https://antietaminstitute.org/hrc/s/HRC/item/27

Here’s a screenshot of the initial state of the viewer for a public user:

Screenshot 2026-03-08 at 11.23.37 AM
Screenshot 2026-03-08 at 11.23.37 AM1397×672 16.2 KB

The viewer works fine for logged-in Global Admins - displaying no error box, just loads the item.

Background: We’ve just migrated our install unchanged from one shared hosting server to another. Then switched to a new theme (Bookshelf). We previously used a theme I adapted from one used by the Yale University Library.

This sounds like a permissions/authorization issue but I have not found a place in Omeka Admin to set permissions for this.

All items are marked Public. I deactivated RestrictedSites, just in case. No effect.

I hope this is an obvious fix and I’m just missing it :slight_smile:

I’d appreciate any thoughts on this!

A big thank-you to @Daniel_KM for all your work on these modules.

Our Omeka install versions:
Omeka S 4.1.1
Bookshelf theme 2.0.1

UniversalViewer 3.6.12-4.2.1
IIIF Server 3.6.29
Image Server 3.6.23
Common 3.4.80

PHP 8.1.33
MySQL 8.0.41-0ubuntu0.24.04.1
OS Linux 6.6.116-grsec-jammy-dirty x86_64

2

We ran into this, and it was a mystery for a while. Basically, when IIIF server creates the image’s manifest file, it does so incorrectly. This is somewhat inconsistent.

To fix it, change admin/module/configure?id=IiifServer > Cache to “create manifest in real time.” It still happens occasionally, but it gets fixed on a page reload, unlike before.

I don’t know why this happens, and thought it was some weirdness with our instance/metadata, so I didn’t report it as a bug, but seeing this post, I’d appreciate if @Daniel_KM would take a look. I can provide some known good vs malformed manifests if needed

1 Like
3

Thanks very much for this - it’s taken me a bit to get back to it, but changing the configuration setting did fix the problem. All objects load in the Viewer now. Huzzah!