Tag: WordPress

RRCHNM has been in the business of producing digital history for over thirty years now, and because of this we have developed hundreds of projects on a variety of now-old web software and systems. Five years ago, when I joined RRCHNM, we decided to shift and consolidate our tech stack towards tools and software that would allow us a bit more creativity in the projects we were developing as well as provide easier ways to sustain projects over time. That resulted in a shift in our technical expertise, leading us to prefer the Python-based web framework Django or the static site generator Hugo for projects while reaching for WordPress, Drupal, and Omeka would be used sparingly.

One of the nice features of a dynamic website—the kind of thing that’s often driven by databases—is the ability to run a search feature. Search is a feature across the various content management systems we use (or once used) at RRCHNM – Omeka, Drupal, and Wordpress. But once a site is flattened and no longer reliant on a database for serving content, the built-in ability of search goes away. For many of our sites, the loss of this feature can be dismaying to users. So, a goal this summer was to figure out a way to implement search on a static site.

As part of our sustainability efforts, we created the end of project workflow which we have shared on this site. How does that actually work when put into practice? In some cases, it has allowed us to wind down projects in stages – keeping core functionality and data accessible while removing high maintenance features – rather than leaving them up until a crisis demands triage or conservation efforts.

We used the workflow with two projects which serve as interesting examples of how to undertake this staged approach in practice. With Creating Local Linkages, we had to decide how to manage closing down the login-only area with a community of users. While we have written about Consolation Prize as a test case for end of project workflows for podcasts, the website for the show also presents some challenges, largely from the plugins which power the episode index page.