Chieftains is a museum of Cherokee and Native American history in Rome, Ga. The museum is housed in the historic home of Major Ridge, one of the signers of the Treaty of New Echota, which resulted in the forced removal of the Cherokee along the Trail of Tears. In fact, the Chieftains Museum/Major Ridge Home is one of only a few private entities to be certified by the National Park Service as a site on the Trail of Tears.

Major Ridge is the “face” of Chieftains, and the museum staff wanted to make sure his history was front and center on the website. But it was also important that potential museum visitors could easily find information about operating hours and admission. Our design was able to include both a focus on history and a focus on visitor information.

The centerpiece of the website is a dynamic calendar of upcoming events at the museum. Using a content management system, Chieftains staff can create calendar entries that automatically display on the events area of the homepage. Plus, the program will make a page for each event, with more details about time, location, admission, etc. They can even set up recurring events to show up every week or every month. And once an event is over, it automatically gets removed from the website.

In addition to sharing information about upcoming events at the museum, the Chieftains staff wanted to be able to post news articles about special exhibits, promotions, fundraisers and more. Our staff set up a blog area on the website and trained the museum staff to create and update articles.

The museum staffers working on the website were thrilled with the simplicity of the events calendar and blog areas, and have already added several new events and articles to the site.

SAI Digital didn’t just create a new design; we also helped organize the large amount of content that was on the museum’s old site. By breaking up the content into shorter pages and subpages, we made it easier for site visitors to find exactly what they need on the site, whether that’s information about field trips, facility rental, Cherokee history or becoming a museum member.

Chieftains is a neat place with a lot of history, and a great resource for Northwest Georgia. We were very happy to help the museum create a website that encourages more visitors and more members, and shares the rich history of local Cherokee culture.