How Museum Websites Evolved—and Why 2025 Is the Best Time to Finally Fix Yours

In 1995, if you wanted to update your museum’s website, you needed to know how to write HTML by hand, upload raw files via FTP, and hope you didn’t crash the homepage with a missing close bracket. There was no content management system, no drag-and-drop editor, and definitely no mobile optimization.

It’s been thirty years since those early digital days—and yet, many museum websites still feel like they’re stuck in the past.

Despite the explosion of web tools, too many institutions are operating on fragile platforms, riddled with outdated plugins, bloated design choices, or systems so rigid that even changing a headline feels like a budget line item.

Let’s take a walk through how museum websites evolved—and why 2025 is the year to finally bring yours into the modern era.

The Hand-Coded 90s: When “Update the Website” Meant “Call Your Developer”

Early museum websites were static, manually coded, and offered limited interactivity, making updates complex and inaccessible to non-developers.

The early web was raw and rigid. Most museum websites were little more than static brochures hosted online. The visual aesthetic? Think plain backgrounds, default fonts, and low-res GIFs uploaded over dial-up.

There were no content management systems, no real interactivity, and definitely no mobile users to worry about.

Under the hood, things were even messier:

• Websites were written in basic HTML—every update meant manually editing raw code.
• Design consistency was tough without CSS, which wasn’t widely used yet.
• Staff without coding experience had no way to update content themselves.

So even though these early sites served a purpose—listing hours, exhibitions, and contact info—they created a bottleneck: museums had information to share, but no easy way to publish it.

2005: The Rise of CMS… and Complexity

The emergence of CMS platforms like Drupal and Joomla offered a glimpse of a more manageable web, but adoption remained slow due to cost, complexity, and technical barriers. WordPress, though introduced in 2003, was still primarily used for blogging rather than full websites.

By the mid-2000s, change was in the air. Content Management Systems like Drupal and Joomla promised to make updates easier. WordPress entered the scene too—but at the time, it was mostly seen as a blogging tool, not a full-site solution.

Still, Web 2.0 was reshaping digital expectations. Visitors were starting to expect interactivity. Video was becoming viable. Museums wanted more than static pages—but getting there was still hard.

Most websites were still built the old-fashioned way, or with clunky WYSIWYG editors like Dreamweaver. And while a few institutions began experimenting with CMS platforms, they often ran into the same issue: tech complexity.

Even when museums did make the leap, they found themselves managing systems that required developers just to do basic things.

Common frustrations from this era:

• CMS tools were hard to customize without technical help.
• Mobile optimization wasn’t a priority—yet.
• Interactive features like Flash tours or multimedia galleries were fragile and hard to maintain.
• Event calendars and exhibit pages often had to be updated manually, one page at a time.

The gap was closing—but not fast enough.

2015: Plugins Everywhere—But Little Coordination

The expansion of plugins and themes offered museums enhanced functionality and design options, yet managing these additions introduced new complexities.

By the mid-2010s, WordPress had cemented its role as the CMS of choice for many museums. And with it came a tidal wave of plugins promising new functionality: event calendars, online ticketing, donation platforms, digital collections—you name it, there was a plugin for it.

This was progress. Museums no longer needed to fund full custom builds just to add features. But there was a catch: these tools weren’t built to talk to each other.

Most websites became a kind of plugin patchwork—each one solving a specific problem, but few playing nicely with the others.

That meant:

• Constant maintenance: Every plugin had its own update cycle, settings, and support issues.
• Compatibility headaches: One update could knock out another feature entirely.
• Performance issues: Overlapping functionality and bloated code slowed things down.
• Developer dependency: Custom fixes and hacks were often needed to hold it all together.

So while museums gained new capabilities, they also inherited a whole new layer of complexity.

2025: Same Plugin Count, Better Plugin Culture

Museums can now have fully custom, dynamic websites without the high costs and technical complexity of traditional development—but they still need experts to set up, optimize, and maintain these systems effectively.

Fast forward to today, and the plugin ecosystem hasn’t gotten smaller—it’s gotten smarter.

Modern museum websites still rely on a suite of plugins. The difference? Today’s best-in-class tools are designed to integrate, not conflict. They’re modular, orchestrated, and purpose-built to work together across the full user journey—from the first site visit to ticket purchase to post-visit email.

For example, you might have:

• Tessitura, Spektrix, or VBO Tickets powering ticketing and event scheduling.
• Modern Events Calendar managing public-facing calendars.
• ACF Pro and Elementor Pro handling layout and content structure.
• FluentCRM syncing visitor actions with your donor outreach.
• Yoast SEO optimizing content for search engines.
• WPFusion connecting it all into your CRM, gated content, and membership tiers.

Each of these tools does its job—but more importantly, they’re designed to talk to each other. That’s the game-changer.

So yes, a modern Low Code/No Code site might have more plugins than one from 2015—but it will run faster, be easier to manage, and offer a more coherent visitor experience because those tools are working from a shared playbook.

That’s the shift: not fewer tools, but better-integrated ones.

Are You Still Stuck in a Past Era?

If your museum’s site is hard to update, slow to load, or built on an aging stack of plugins—chances are you’re still living in a previous web era.

Let’s call it what it is:

• Stuck in 1995: Static HTML pages. Zero flexibility.
• Stuck in 2005: Early CMS, hard to customize, not mobile-friendly.
• Stuck in 2015: Plugin overload, slow performance, brittle design.

Each of those stages solved a problem at the time—but they’ve become liabilities now.

Why This Moment Matters

2025 isn’t just “a good time” to fix your website. It’s a rare convergence of:

• Mature Low Code platforms that can actually deliver enterprise-level functionality.
• Affordable cloud hosting with speed, security, and scalability built in.
• Widespread mobile-first standards that finally prioritize user experience.
• AI-driven enhancements that make sites smarter without being overwhelming.

And let’s be honest: your digital presence is often someone’s first experience with your museum. If it feels outdated or clunky, it casts a shadow on everything else.

You don’t need perfection. But you do need a website that’s easy to manage, flexible enough to grow, and aligned with how people actually engage online today.

Final Thought: Don’t Rebuild the Past. Design for the Future.

For too long, museums have had to choose between fully custom builds that are hard to maintain—or janky CMS setups that barely hang together.

The Low Code/No Code revolution offers a third way: modern infrastructure that’s fast, flexible, and genuinely empowering for content teams.

The best part? It’s not just possible. It’s sustainable.

If your museum is ready to stop duct-taping digital strategy together and start building something that lasts, 2025 is the year to do it right.