It’s been almost two years since the The Royal Armoury, Skokloster’s Castle and the Hallwyl Museum merged with the National Historical Museums and it’s about time that we get a common web platform.
Our six museums currently have sites of varying scope and with different features and looks. The three museums that formerly formed the government agency LSH (Livrustkammaren and Skokloster’s castle with the Hallwylska museum foundation) have a certain cohesive form, while the Historical Museum, the Royal Coin Cabinet and the Tumba papermill museum are completely different. In addition to the museum web sites, the National Historical Museums (the government agency) also has its own website and of course the Archaeologists. In addition, we have several other web-based solutions in our buildings, in different exhibitions, in the entrance halls and our restaurants.
The various websites and web apps use three web publishing systems; WordPress, Drupal and Litium. One of the goals of the new platform is to reduce the number of systems to one. We have decided to move on with WordPress.
The benefits of consolidating the systems are several. Our web editor and others who publish do not need to learn multiple systems. We can target internal training towards WordPress. Technical management becomes easier. We can collect all our webs on one server. The modules we develop, such as calendar and collection search, will work on all websites.
The aim of the project is to build a system that is as uniform as possible but at the same time considers the differences between the business units. Our ambition is not to smooth out and make a unity web, instead the different brands should continue to have their unique profiles. Much like a car manufacturer works with platforms, the different car models have different functions and target groups but share engines, electrical control systems and a host of other components. To the consumers, they look like separate cars, but they share technical solutions.
In addition to consolidating our websites, we will also create a new web for the History of Sweden project and build a new collection search. These projects hook into the new web platform project and will work together.
Our partner in the transformation process is the digital agency Bazooka, which has also developed several of our current web sites, such as historiska.se and arkeologerna.com
The timetable is to launch the first new website in early autumn 2020 and the remainder before the end of 2021. On this blog, I will continuously be writing about the ongoing work. All comments and inputs are welcome!
