Historic preservation

A home online for what you have spent years protecting

Historic sites, museums, archives, and preservation trusts carry material nobody else has. The web is where most people will meet it first — before they ever park in your lot — and the site should be equal to what is inside the building.

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The collection is the asset. The site is how most people reach it.

Four different audiences arrive at the same homepage: a family deciding where to spend Saturday, a researcher looking for one deed or one photograph, a school group leader planning a trip, and a funder deciding whether to renew. Each needs a different route in, and they all need to find it without asking anyone. We build the structure that lets one site serve all four — visit planning up front, the collection genuinely browsable underneath, and the case for support written for the people who read it.

What we build for this sector

Collection and archive pages that behave like a catalog

Photographs, documents, maps, and oral histories organized so a visitor can browse and a researcher can search. Credit lines, dates, and rights information sit with each item, and material that is not digitized yet has a place waiting for it.

Interpretation, not just inventory

The storytelling layouts that make a collection land — timelines, then-and-now photo comparisons, mapped locations, and oral history clips with full transcripts. The scholarship is yours; we build the frame that carries it.

Virtual tours and 3D walkthroughs

Room-by-room 3D capture of the building, embedded so anyone can walk through it from a phone. Hotspots let you attach a story, a photograph, or a restoration note to the exact spot it belongs to.

Visit planning that answers the real questions

Hours, admission, parking, tour times, group bookings, and an honest description of the physical accessibility of a historic building — stairs, thresholds, and all — so nobody arrives to a surprise.

Pages built for donors and grant funders

Giving, membership, and campaign pages that state what a gift protects, plus a place to publish annual reports, board information, and the documentation a grant officer expects to find without emailing you for it.

Accessibility handled while we build

Public-facing institutions are commonly measured against WCAG — the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the standard most accessibility rules point to. Keyboard navigation, color contrast, captions and transcripts for media, and a written convention for describing historic images in alt text are part of the build, not a later cleanup.

How a preservation project runs

  1. 1

    Inventory

    We walk through what already exists — scans, negatives, finding aids, oral histories, prior survey work, and any rights or donor restrictions attached to it. That inventory decides what can go online now and what goes online in a later phase.

  2. 2

    Story map

    Together we choose which stories lead, and we draw the separate routes a first-time visitor, a researcher, and a funder each take through the site. This is where the interpretation gets structured, before a single page is designed.

  3. 3

    Capture

    Where something needs to be created rather than collected, we handle it: 3D capture of interiors, photography of objects and architecture, and consistent digitization standards so the files stay useful long after this project.

  4. 4

    Build

    We design and develop the site, wire up donations, memberships, and forms, and test it on real phones and with a screen reader — not just in a desktop browser.

  5. 5

    Launch and hand off

    We handle the launch, then train your staff and volunteers so a new exhibit, event, or acquisition can go up without calling a developer. Written documentation stays with the organization.

Services this sector usually starts with

Websites

Fast, beautiful sites built to turn visitors into leads.

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ADA compliance

Accessibility built into the markup, checked by hand as well as by scanner.

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Online courses

Branded training that issues real certificates on completion.

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A good fit if

  • A historic house or site open to the public
  • A museum with more in the archive than on the walls
  • A preservation trust raising money for a specific building
  • A heritage trail, district, or tourism group
  • A volunteer-run organization with a deep collection

Questions we get

No — this is the normal starting point, and building first often makes the digitization easier. We design the archive structure around what the material is, publish what is ready, and leave the pattern in place so new scans slot in as they are finished. Nothing has to be complete before you launch.
Yes. We capture the interior in 3D and embed a walkthrough people can move through on a phone or a laptop, with hotspots that attach stories, archival photos, or restoration notes to specific rooms and objects. Scope and cost depend on the size of the building and how many spaces you want captured — we'll give you a firm number after a walkthrough.
We build to WCAG — the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines — from the first line of markup, including keyboard navigation, contrast, captions and transcripts for oral histories and video, and descriptive alt text for archival images. Which specific standard or conformance level applies to your institution depends on your funding and your state, so we ask your counsel or grant officer to confirm it and we build to that target.
It is one of the main reasons to do it. Funders and major donors look at the website before the meeting, and a site that shows the collection, the interpretation, and the condition of the building does a lot of that work for you. We can also stand up a dedicated campaign page with progress, naming opportunities, and the reporting documents funders ask for.

Tell us what you are preserving.

Start your project

A few quick questions — about two minutes.