Bill, Many many thanks for your extensive post on this topic. The Museum at FIT is in the middle of discussions on how best to change our exhibition website strategy...and moving to Wordpress has been one of the primary routes we've been discussing. I hope I might be able to reach out to you (or a colleague) in a couple of weeks to learn more about your experience with Wordpress.
Many thanks!! Tamsen Schwartzman Museum Media Manager The Museum at FIT, Room E116 Seventh Avenue at 27th Street New York, NY 10001 212~217~4547 ** 212~217~4561 fax www.fitnyc.edu/museum Visit our collections online at fashionmuseum.fitnyc.edu Find us on Facebook: Follow us on Twitter @Museumatfit ________________________________________ From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu] on behalf of Bill Swersey [bswer...@asiasociety.org] Sent: Monday, March 11, 2013 11:10 AM To: mcn-l at mcn.edu Subject: Re: [MCN-L] Special exhibition websites For many years Asia Society Museum commissioned a mini-site for nearly every new exhibition. Originally they were highly customized HTML, sometimes Flash. Expensive to build, impossible to maintain over time. About 5 years ago we switched to templated WordPress sites for most exhibitions - my department (Digital Media for all of Asia Society) worked with the museum department to streamline the site structure since most sites had similar basic components (about the exhibition, image gallery, visit info, curator essay, intro video, etc). Design was usually derived from the catalog and exhibition design and we typically spent $1500-2500 with a freelancer to customize WordPress. The biggest problem with this approach was that these mini-sites were completely detached from our main Drupal website - the content was not in the same database, the mini-sites did not offer the same user interface, front-end features. Keeping dozens of old WordPress sites current (security updates, standard interface features, etc) was a real chore (and often was not done). Last year we launched exhibition templates within our Drupal system, so we can now easily build pages for each new exhibition via our Drupal CMS. Most of the work is done my non-technical staff from the museum and time-to-launch has been significantly decreased. Obviously there have been considerable cost savings. Current example: http://asiasociety.org/new-york/exhibitions/artful-recluse-painting-poetry-and-politics-seventeenth-century-china The biggest downside (at least from some people's perspective) is the lack of a unique look and feel for each site. We do allow a "poster" image for each and also create large custom promotional images for our home pages. Still time/cost savings, consistency of user interface and the ability for the template to evolve going forward are very significant. This solution has also been utilized by our new Hong Kong and Houston, TX centers which opened in 2012. Both have exhibition spaces (though they're not technically "museums"). Our decision to go to a more templated vs. custom mini-site approach was definitely helped by the Metropolitan Museum's decision to do the same when they relaunched their site last year. http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/current-exhibitions I should say that from time to time we have had discussions about possibly building custom mini-sites for major exhibitions in the future if there's a concept and/or content that the current template cannot support and of course if funding exists. ...Bill Bill Swersey | Executive Director, Digital Media & Strategy | Asia Society | 725 Park Avenue New York, NY 10021 | 212-327-9326 | www.AsiaSociety.org<http://www.AsiaSociety.org/> Hong Kong | Houston | Los Angeles | Manila | Mumbai | New York | San Francisco | Seoul | Shanghai | Sydney | Washington DC Twitter: @AsiaSociety @Swersey | facebook.com/asiasociety<http://facebook.com/asiasociety> | youtube.com/asiasociety<http://youtube.com/asiasociety> On Mar 9, 2013, at 7:00 AM, <mcn-l-request at mcn.edu<mailto:mcn-l-request at mcn.edu>> wrote: Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2013 19:53:18 +0000 From: Heather Hart <hhart at broadartfoundation.org<mailto:hh...@broadartfoundation.org>> To: "mcn-l at mcn.edu<mailto:mcn-l at mcn.edu>" <mcn-l at mcn.edu<mailto:mcn-l at mcn.edu>> Subject: [MCN-L] Special exhibition websites Message-ID: <EE61658759D9144C8B77BE519820BCF88F5ADE at VM-TBAFEXCH1.broadartfoundation.local<mailto:EE61658759D9144C8B77BE519820BCF88F5ADE at VM-TBAFEXCH1.broadartfoundation.local>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Hi everyone, I was wondering if some of you would be willing to share your experiences on creating exhibition-specific sub-websites vs. integrating special exhibition content into an existing design, which can be limiting. Particularly I would be interested to hear, if you have experience with both scenarios, which you felt was more effective and why or (since this is probably not a one-size-fits-all topic) what circumstances would make you personally select one format over another. If you have any stats you could share that reinforce your opinions, that would be great too. Thanks, Heather Hart Director of IT the broad art foundation 3355 Barnard Way Santa Monica, CA 90405 310.399.4004 office 310.606.1215 mobile 310.399.7799 fax hhart at broadartfoundation.org<mailto:hhart at broadartfoundation.org><mailto:hhart at broadartfoundation.org> www.broadartfoundation.org<http://www.broadartfoundation.org/><http://www.broadartfoundation.org/>
