Hi Chris

I'd do the strategic stuff first, as your initial email suggested you were
doing. Nothing heavy, but ask yourself what you want to do as an
organisation given your limited resources, figure out what you want to
consider a "success" (probably a person through the door, but might be more
complex), then work out how to actually go about approaching it.

There's a bunch of free stuff here - worksheets, stuff like that:
http://trainingdigital.co.uk/bundles/digital-strategy/ - ready to fill in /
adapt / ignore as you see fit.

Technology wise: what Tony says. Figure out what you want to do, what
assets you have as an organisation and what the constraints are - and then
go from there. Certainly whatever your answers are for this I'd start very
small and very cheap - BUT think about open- and portable-ness for every
decision you make.

Wix is a great example of what not to use from this point of view, IMO. It
looks great and is very easy to use - but this:

"It is not possible to export or embed files, pages or sites, created using
the Wix Editor, to another external destination or host. All Wix sites must
be hosted on the Wix servers."

https://www.wix.com/support/html5/article/exporting-or-embedding-your-wix-site-elsewhere

..is to me an absolute nail in the coffin. Open source stuff like Drupal,
Omeka, WordPress etc all have various routes to get your content in and out
- so if you commit time and energy to building your site on system X then
you'll have the option to dump everything out and bring it into system Y if
you decide you hate it 2 years down the line.

We're in danger of heading into "which CMS" territory but again as per
Tony's email, most systems nowadays support custom taxonomies (in human
speak: you can have an "exhibition" or "object" data "type"). In case it's
of use, http://cultureobject.co.uk/ is our (open source) answer to getting
object metadata online using WordPress - but there are lots of others ways
for WordPress and others - and tools like Omeka which is similarly awesome.
There have been a bunch of discussions on this list about the pros and cons
- worth having a look back via the MCG website.

But.. before thinking about the tech, think about your content and what you
want it to do for you.

Good luck :-)

Mike








_____________________________


*Mike Ellis *

Thirty8 Digital: a small but perfectly formed digital agency:
http://thirty8.co.uk

* My book: http://heritageweb.co.uk *


On 22 May 2016 at 17:10, Tony Crockford <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> > On 22 May 2016, at 16:18, Dave Wade <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > Whilst this might seem like a "Me Too" I sometimes wonder if Drupal
> might be better for a Museum Site where you want to store details of
> objects. There are some plug-ins that allow the creation of custom Objects
> which can have many attributes, and which can be listed on highly
> customizable view grids. I haven't used it for a museum but I did use it
> for a Radio Club on-line library catalogue. Each Library Item had a number
> of custom fields e.g. "Title", "Author" , "ISBN", "Date Published" etc. The
> can also contain links to items. A plug-in allows the tables containing
> these items to be uploaded from a CSV file.
>
> The same features are generally available in many Content Management
> systems.
>
> The criteria for choosing a platform should involve more than a personal
> preference.
>
> IME Drupal development is significantly more expensive than WordPress and
> you’re more likely to need a Drupal developer for help extending the system
> than WordPress.
>
> See:
> http://alistapart.com/article/choosing-a-cms-your-organization-will-love
>
> Which identifies the main pitfalls of CMS choice.
>
> The one everyone seems to ignore is that you need to create content before
> you think about managing it.
>
> Does every object in your collection have a set of digital archive
> photographs and a number of interpretations already written?  if not, start
> there - Word processor, File system and Spreadsheet are all you need to
> create and track content.
>
> Your discovered content. image and metadata requirements will then better
> inform your choice of content management platform.
>
> Put your story first, or you’ll always be constrained by your system of
> choice…
>
> :o)
>
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