Tech stack

GreerHeritage.com

WORDPRESS

The primary website runs on a standard installation of Wordpress, hosted on a shared UNIX server. Our web host is A2 Hosting, selected in part for providing “unlimited” bandwidth and file space (within some reasonable bounds) at bargain-basement prices. Not the best by far, but it's keeping us online for pennies.

X THEME and CORNERSTONE

Design and layout is managed with Themeco X and its associated editor, Cornerstone. This is a powerful visual editor that makes complex responsive web design relatively simple, but it does have the down side of an extra learning curve over the normal Wordpress editor. Also, if pages are edited in the normal editor, they will both break and no longer be editable in X. This means it is essential that no one attempt to edit Wordpress content without learning about X and Cornerstone first.

wiki.GreerHeritage.com

MEDIAWIKI

The website runs on a standard installation of Mediawiki, hosted alongside GreerHeritage.com. It is used for collaborate research, training documents, and operational documents.

Collections Management System

(originally GreerHeritage.com/cms, now GreerHeritage.com/omeka-s)

OMEKA-S

Collections management software is essential for museum operation but is also very expensive. We started with Omeka Classic, a free open-source software package, and later moved to the more robust Omeka-S. Its greatest weakness is in not having a clear systematized mechanism for accession numbering; we are doing that with custom fields, but there is no auto-numbering. For that purpose, we use a Google script applied to a Google Sheet. Omeka-S is installed in GreerHeritage.com.

On the back end, Omeka stores complete records about items in our collection, including accession data, curatorial data, and photo/video content.

On the front end, Omeka automatically publishes some or all of that data to the website, in a user-friendly museum context. It also provides simple searching of our complete database, making it an invaluable research tool.

GEOLOCATION

We utilize multiple Omeka-S plugins, but the Geolocation plugin is worthy of individual comment because it powers the interactive map on our website, which is immensely valuable.

ALTERNATIVES

There are several excellent open-source alternatives to Omeka including ArchivesSpace, CollectiveAccess, and OpenArchive. Each of these, and Omeka, have strengths and weaknesses — usually because each was designed to be great in different areas. CollectiveAcess and ArchivesSpace both look they might be superior solutions to Omeka, but both require more technical expertise than I have.

CRM, communication, events, and donations (and staff.GreerHeritage.com)

We utilize CiviCRM for multiple functions, including:

• Contact management. The software stores all contact information and provides fairly advanced features like relationships.
• Communication management. The software provides bulk mail components for communicating with contacts.
• Donations management. The software has a fundraising component which includes online forms and giving.
• Events management. The software provides the ability to set up complex events, provide registration forms, and accept direct payment (e.g., for ticket sales).

Our CiviCRM installation utilizes the Wordpress version of the software and is installed on staff.GreerHeritage.com. That subdomain was also originally used as a collaborative workspace, but that use has been migrated to wiki.GreerHeritage.com.

BULK EMAIL:

We use SparkPost for bulk email sending.

Google for Nonprofits:

We have been approved for Google for Nonprofits, but have not yet begun using any of its features.