Migrating a Complex Museum Website from Commercial CMS to Open Source (MW2013)

Migrating a Complex

Museum Website

from a Commercial CMS

to Open Source

Jane Alexander & Niki Krause

Cleveland Museum of Art

CONCEPT

Put the art out there!

AFTERTHOUGHT

Will somebody please think of collection online?

ACCESSABILITY

Critical Shortcomings

Critical Shortcomings

• heavily customized CMS

• perplexing code

• no SEO, no paths for pop-up content pages

• no sharing

• flakey Mailing and Calendar plugins

• complex staff interface

• no cross platform

• no mobile site

• high license fees

DISCONNECT

Ownership & Stakeholders

INTERDEPENDENCE

Major Technology Projects

Collection Catalog and

Management System (CCMS)

Life-long Learning Center

Tour Guide App

Moving Forward

• bring hosting and develop in house

• get the right back end

• give departments a larger role in guiding and maintaining

• fix and expand Collection Online

• build to support many museum efforts

• restructure IMTS, build an application department

PHASE I

STABILIZE + PLAN

IMTS

Project Leadership

EQUAL VOICE

Web Steering Committee

Subcommittees

• Collection Research & Presentation

• Educational & Entertainment Programming

• Transactions

• Branding (Marketing and Design)

• User Functionality

CMS OPTIONS

Should I stay or should I go?

CMS Options

• stay with Sitecore,

but hire an in-house developer

– licensing and training costs

– limited mobility

– complex interface

• move to Drupal,

with an in-house developer

– unknown negatives (black hole)

START OFF

WITH DRUPAL

In-house Web Developer

USABILITY

Short-term Solutions

Menus & Navigation

Streamlined Navigation

Homepage

Homepage with emphasis

GATEKEEPER PILOT

Distributing Responsibility

MEMBERSHIP

DONATIONS

e-Commerce Portal

PHASE II

BUILD

THE FOUNDATION

POP-UP PAGES

Redesign

COLLECTION ONLINE

Redesign for Art Lovers

ANALYSIS

Content Types

GALLERY ONE

ARTLENS

Places to go, things to do…

MIGRATION PLAN

Long-term Solution

RESPONSIVE DESIGN

Mobile Devices

SCHEDULING

RSVP

e-Commerce Portal

LAUNCH

TRIAGE

Press the button, Max!

PHASE III

OUT + UP

GATEKEEPERS

WEB EDITORS

Distributing Responsibility

SMARTPHONE

Redesign

ACCESSABILITY

SEO Implementation

COLLECTION ONLINE

Enhance for Researchers