Implementation

Implementation

Overall, the project has seen approximately 12 months of planning (including extensive audience research and production of an Audience Development Plan) followed by more than six months of programming, design and content preparation.

Unlike many website upgrades, this was not a simple ‘re-skinning’ of the old site, but rather rebuilding completely from the ground up. This was done utilising solid yet flexible underlying technology provided by the EPiServer Content Management System.

Working with all departments across the museum we have aimed to provide new content publishing models, many of which allow non-technical staff to produce and manage online content relating to their particular areas of expertise.

The new site also incorporates a robust and flexible What’s On system developed entirely in-house, along with the Resource Finder. This tool enables the cataloguing of all online resources (including infosheets, weblinks, object records and library holdings) into logical browsing categories, with a mechanism to automatically generate links to related resources, based on keyword matching and relevance ranking.

Another new feature is the Natural History Collection Search function. This allows users to investigate tens of thousands of records delivered straight from our Collection Management System, EMu, and will be extended in future to incorporate records from our History & Technology and Indigenous collections.