Building Digital Museums
By founding digital museums, we can create intentional spaces to exhibit art, photography, and educational materials. These are spaces presented for people to see and experience, rather than consume in a social media feed as part of a monetized experience designed to convert time and attention into profit.
From that perspective, it should be noted that digital museums can be run at extremely low costs, often for free. These galleries are set apart from larger platforms on the web due to their niche focuses and ability to serve as independent sources of creativity.
The Tech Stack #
You don’t need expensive infrastructure to host a museum. A few free options for hosting static sites include:
Static Site Generators (SSGs) #
While you can hand-code every HTML page, using a Static Site Generator allows you to separate your “Exhibits” (content) from your “Architecture” (code). This improves your ability to manage and curate content by generating pages automatically from data files.
Popular options include:
- Jekyll: Great for beginners and natively supported by GitHub Pages.
- Eleventy (11ty): Flexible and fast, allowing you to use various template languages.
- Hugo: Known for incredible speed, helpful if your museum grows to thousands of items.
Deploying sites this way ensures data portability; the museum can be “published” anywhere needed as long as the necessary network topography is present.
Structural Considerations #
Although anyone can build their own digital museum in whatever way they like, a few best practices ensure your visitors have a good experience.
- Accessibility: Ensure your museum is open to everyone.
- The WebAIM project provides a list of resources that can help with this: https://webaim.org/resources/
- URL Structures:
- Use hierarchical and reasonably organized paths (e.g.,
/exhibits/photography/2024/). - Ensure page structure is consistent or changes infrequently to avoid “dead links”.
- Use hierarchical and reasonably organized paths (e.g.,
- Navigation Patterns:
- Guided Tours: Consider “Next/Previous” buttons for a linear storytelling experience.
- Free Roaming: Use grid layouts or maps for visitors who want to explore at their own pace.
- Mobile Experience:
- Ensure high-resolution art scales down correctly for phone screens without breaking the layout.
Curatorial Advice #
Building the site is only half the work; curating it is the other.
- Niche Focus: The best digital museums often cover specific, obscure topics (e.g., “The Museum of 90s Web Design” or “The Local Botany Archive”).
- Labels & Metadata: Don’t just show an image. Provide the “tombstone” data: Title, Artist, Date, and Medium. Context turns an image into an exhibit.
Content Ideas #
In general, it can be useful to include a few of these common features within your digital museum:
- A Map: A visual guide to the layout of your exhibits.
- Mission Statement: A clear explanation of what the museum collects and why.
- New Acquisitions: A specific section featuring a list of new exhibits to encourage return visits.
Beyond this, there is no limit to what exhibits can include. Consider virtual experiences, augmented reality, photo galleries, time capsules, or planetariums.
Digital Toolbox #
A collection of tools to help build and maintain your exhibits.
Image Optimization & Processing
- Squoosh: Compress high-res images for the web without losing visual quality.
- Halftone Editor: For stylized image effects.
- ImageOptim: Removes bloated metadata from images to save space.
Animation & 3D
- Gifski: High-quality GIF generator.
- Model Viewer: Easily display interactive 3D models on the web.
Deep Zoom
- OpenSeadragon: An open-source, web-based viewer for high-resolution zoomable images.
Your Museum #
Built something cool? Drop us a line at [email protected] to be considered for our “Nearby Museums” page. We would love to build out a collection of like-minded sites with aligning goals that are located within the sort distance of a hyperlink.