Carson House Museum Website

Client Background

The Historic Carson House is one of the oldest standing structures in Western North Carolina and serves as a museum, archival center, and community event venue. The organization needed a modern, mobile friendly website that could support historical content, staff updates, event listings, and visitor information in an intuitive and flexible way.

Project Context

This project was delivered by the Interactive Knowledge development team as a custom WordPress build hosted on Pantheon. The goal was to create a visually rich site with strong historical identity while making content management simple for non technical museum staff. The work included custom theme development, responsive layout design, content architecture, and feature builds tailored to museum operations.

My Role and Contributions

I contributed across both the front end and back end of the site, focusing on:
• Custom WordPress theme development using PHP templates and modular SCSS
• Building custom post types and taxonomies for events, slideshows, staff, and stories
• Creating the homepage hero slideshow with content managed fields and responsive images
• Developing the staff and board directory with custom sorting and role filters
• Building the events calendar system with date parsing and upcoming event logic
• Styling and layout refinements across pages, templates, and custom components
• Implementing accessibility improvements including semantic structure and external link handling
• Supporting Pantheon deployments and QA across dev, test, and live environments

My work helped shape the core features that the client uses daily, ensuring the site is stable, accessible, and easy for the museum staff to update.

Key Features
• Custom hero slideshow with content managed slides
• Events system with custom fields and date based sorting
• Staff and board directory with alphabetical filtering
• Mobile first navigation and responsive layout
• WordPress Customizer controls for museum hours and key site content
• Content managed footer with dynamic policies and contact info
• External link indicators and accessibility improvements

Challenges and Solutions

Managing a large variety of content types
The museum needed several different content structures. Custom post types and Fieldmanager based fields were used to give staff simple, guided forms for events, staff, slideshows, and stories.

Sorting staff members by last name
Names were stored as full titles. A custom sorting function parsed and sorted by last name for a clean directory display.

Allowing non clickable parent menu items on desktop
The client wanted parent menu labels to open dropdowns but not act as links. I implemented targeted CSS and JS behavior to keep desktop interaction clean while preserving mobile tap functionality.

Keeping the site accessible and easy to navigate
I added ARIA labels, keyboard navigation support, meaningful alt text, clear focus states, and accessible external link indicators.

Deployment and Testing
• Developed locally using Lando
• Deployed through Pantheon’s Git workflow
• Cross device testing for layout, navigation, and event pages
• Accessibility checks with screen readers and automated tools
• Event and staff content stress tests for real world usage

Results
• A fully responsive and modern museum website
• Easier content workflows for staff
• Clear pathways for visitors to learn, plan visits, and attend events
• Improved accessibility and search engine structure
• Strong visual presentation that strengthens the museum’s identity

Value Added
• Custom features tailored to museum operations
• A design system that is clean, timeless, and easy to maintain
• A reliable WordPress foundation hosted on Pantheon
• A site structure that is future ready for additional expansions