Choosing a theme suitable for a large archive

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  stefmorgan · Member · Feb 10, 2024 at 3:29 am

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  Setting up a new archival website!

  –I need to make a website that will serve as a permanent archive for materials in many media, including scanned manuscripts, digitized text files, old color prints and black-and-white negatives, scanned drawings, audio recordings, videos, and material objects including textiles and other artifacts large and small.

  –I want to make access universal and free, unlimited by a paywall, though people should have to sign in if they want to download. Copyright will be on Creative Commons terms.

  –Since many people in my intended audience have smartphones but no computers, I will need the site to be clearly navigable and readable on the small screen.

  –I want to integrate a widget for site translation, or text translation. I like translate.google.com, but if this is not now an option, I’ll need a good equivalent. What is best?.

  –As an archive, holding materials that can be grouped by many different criteria (language, area, date, author, topic, medium, and so on), the site needs a reliable way to sort these files and extract collections as specific as the user requires, perhaps by using codes or customizable sets of keywords. How to set this up?

  –And then there are comments. Should I outsource this function to academia.edu, by reposting materials there?

  –People may contribute their own materials to the site, in any media, so uploading to a reader’s section should be made easy.

  — I guess there may be WordPress themes that suit my needs, or that can be modified to work, and I need help to choose the best one for my needs, and to adapt it.

  –When the site is complete, as an archive, I want it to be preserved and accessible freely and in perpetuity, without payment, by an institution that shares its goals. So the site needs to be flexible enough to be easily taken over by new hosts.

  Many thanks for any suggestions by persons with relevant experience!
  SM

  Thank you!

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