What a museum or gallery website needs

A museum or gallery website has four jobs: help people plan a visit, show what's on now, share the collection, and bring in members and donors. Most visitors arrive with a practical question (are you open, what does it cost, where do I park, is it step-free), so the visit page matters more than the home page. Build the site around Visit, What's on, Collection, and Support, and keep exhibition pages online after they close.

The basics every small business site shares, such as owning your domain, security, speed, and upkeep, are in WordPress for small businesses.

The pages you need

Make the visit page answer everything

Write the visit page for someone who has never been. Answer, in this order:

1. Hours today and this week, including the time of last admission and any days you're closed. List holiday closures well before each holiday.
2. Admission: prices by visitor type, free days or hours, and who gets in free (members, children under a set age).
3. Tickets: whether to book ahead, timed entry if you use it, and a link to buy.
4. Getting here: the address as visitors should type it into a map app, parking (where, how much), transit stops, and bike parking.
5. Inside: coat check, bag rules, photography rules, strollers, the café or shop and its hours.
6. Groups and school visits: how far ahead to book and who to contact.

Put the common questions in a list of questions and answers at the bottom of the page. Match the hours on the page to your Google Business Profile every time they change. See Set up and optimize your Google Business Profile.

Accessibility: the building and the website

Visitors with disabilities need to know before they travel whether they can get in and get around. "We are fully accessible" doesn't tell them. Be specific:

• Which entrance is step-free, and where it is relative to the main door
• Whether elevators reach every gallery
• Wheelchairs or seating to borrow, and benches in the galleries
• Accessible restrooms and where they are
• Service animals welcome
• Large-print labels, audio description, ASL-interpreted tours, sensory-friendly hours or kits, if you offer them, and how far ahead to request them
• A named contact, with an email address and phone number, for access questions

The website needs to be accessible too: alt text for images, captions on videos, enough color contrast, and pages that work with a keyboard. Museums run by a city, county, state, or public university are covered by the Department of Justice's web accessibility rule for state and local governments. See The DOJ's Title II web accessibility rule and the ADA website compliance checklist.

For artworks, write alt text that says what the image shows ("Oil painting of a woman reading by a window, in blue and gold"), not just the title. The title and artist can sit in the caption. See How to write alt text for images.

Exhibitions: keep them online

Give each exhibition its own page with the dates, the gallery it's in, a description, a few images with credits, related events, and sponsor credits.

When an exhibition closes, don't delete its page. Move it to a Past exhibitions list and change the dates to read as past. Past exhibition pages keep showing up in searches for the artists and subjects they covered, and they're a public record of your program for researchers, lenders, and funders. Deleting them breaks every link that pointed to them.

Put the collection online

You don't need the whole collection online on day one. Start with highlights: 50 well-documented works with good photos are more useful than 5,000 records with no images.

For each object, include what's on the label and a little more:

• Title, artist or maker, and date
• Medium and dimensions
• Credit line
• Whether it's on view, and where
• A short description or label text
• Images you have the rights to publish, with photographer credit

If you use collections management software with its own online module, link to it or embed it rather than re-typing records into the website. Pick one place as the source of truth.

Events and programs

• Use a calendar or list that hides events once they've passed, so the page never leads with last month's lecture.
• Set up recurring programs (weekly tours, monthly family days) once as a series, not as 52 separate entries.
• Put registration or tickets on the event page itself. If ticketing runs on another system, make sure it links back to your site after purchase.

Membership and giving

• Membership: list each level with its price and benefits side by side, and let people join and renew online. A PDF form to print and mail loses most of the people who'd join on the spot.
• Donations: put a Donate or Support link in the header of every page. Keep the donation form short and say what a gift pays for.
• Space rentals: if you rent galleries or a courtyard for weddings and events, give it its own page with capacities, photos, and an inquiry form.

Common mistakes

• Hours and holiday closures are out of date, or differ from Google.
• Admission prices are only on the ticketing site.
• "Accessible" with no detail about entrances, elevators, or restrooms.
• Exhibition pages deleted when the exhibition closes.
• The events page leads with past events, or is empty.
• Huge, uncompressed collection images that make pages slow. See Best image size and format for your website.
• Membership only through a printable form.

If your site runs on Dirigible

• Collection: Dirigible Artworks catalogs artists (bio, nationality, birth and death details, photo) and artworks (images, date, medium, dimensions, description, credit, and whether it's On View), with categories for filtering. The Artwork Gallery block shows works handpicked, by category, or by artist, and each artwork and artist gets its own page with structured data for search engines. See Build an online art gallery.
• Events: Dirigible Events adds an events calendar and lists, recurring events for regular tours and programs, and ticket sales through WooCommerce with QR code check-in at the door. See Add events and an event calendar and Set up recurring events.
• Exhibitions: there's no separate exhibition type. Make each exhibition a page under an Exhibitions parent page, and link its related events.
• Visit page questions: the FAQ block shows questions and answers as an accordion or a list, marked up for search engines. See FAQ.
• Hours: Dirigible Hours shows your weekly hours in the footer, header, or utility bar. See Enter and display business hours.
• Staff, board, and docents: Dirigible People builds a staff directory. See Build a staff directory or team page.
• Donate button: the header button puts Donate or Become a member on every page. See Add a header menu button.
• Accessibility checks: the Accessibility audit in Dirigible → Tools & Maintenance checks pages against WCAG and flags images with no alt text. See Content gardening tools.