Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum

Client Background

Patriots Point is a major naval history museum located on Charleston Harbor in South Carolina. The museum is built around several iconic vessels and attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. The website needed to support high volumes of traffic, present detailed museum content, and offer strong tools for planning visits, exploring exhibits, and purchasing tickets.

Project Context

This project was developed by the Interactive Knowledge team as a custom Drupal build tailored to the museum’s needs. It supports structured content types for vessels, aircraft, exhibitions, online experiences, events, and collections. The site integrates with external platforms for ticketing, collections management, newsletters, and 3D interactives. The theme showcases the naval identity of the museum with a bold design and responsive media.

My Role and Contributions

I contributed across the front end and back end of the Patriots Point project, including:

• SCSS and theme updates in the custom ik_client theme
• Template refinements for museum content like vessels, exhibitions, and events
• Support for custom modules such as patriots_core and patriots_hours
• Fixes related to layouts, spacing, media, and interactive components
• Updates to views, blocks, menus, and content displays across the site
• Adjustments for accessibility including ARIA attributes, focus management, and media alternatives
• Front end support for carousels, galleries, and hero video behavior
• General maintenance, content model work, and cross environment QA on Pantheon

My work improved visual consistency, accessibility, and the reliability of several core user flows.

Key Features

• Vessel showcase with detailed pages for the USS Yorktown, USS Laffey, and submarine exhibits
• Aircraft and collection object pages with images, specifications, and historical context
• AR card support and 3D model embedding
• Event calendar with recurring events and museum programming filters
• Ticketing integration with purchase flows and external systems
• Visitor tools including hours, directions, accessibility information, and contact forms
• Layout Builder support for creating flexible page sections
• Spanish language support for key content areas

Challenges and Solutions

Complex content relationships

Content types like vessels, aircraft, exhibitions, and events have many cross links. I contributed to template and view updates that ensured relationships displayed correctly and consistently.

Media heavy design requirements

The site uses many large images and video assets. I implemented SCSS, lazy loading, and template adjustments that improved responsiveness and performance.

Interactive elements with accessibility requirements

Carousels, tabs, and video players required accessible markup. I helped refine attributes and interactions to meet accessibility expectations.

High traffic performance needs

The site serves a large museum audience. I supported adjustments that worked with Pantheon caching and Solr search for better performance.

Deployment and Testing

• Local development on Lando
• Pantheon dev, test, and live workflow
• Config export and import for updates
• Testing across devices for media, navigation, and interactive elements
• Solr indexing and search validation

Results

• A stable and visually polished museum website
• Strong support for vessels, aircraft, and collections content
• Reliable event listings and visit planning tools
• Improved accessibility and usability across key interactive components
• A scalable platform that supports growth in content and visitor demand

Value Added

• A digital experience that reflects the scale and importance of the museum
• Hands on support for both back end and front end features
• Enhanced reliability of interactive media and exhibition content
• A modern Drupal implementation that supports long term maintenance