A Friendly, Non-Technical Guide for the Site's Webmaster and Developers

This helpful guide shows you—step by step—how to keep Combe Martin Museum's new foundational site fresh, accurate, and welcoming, without needing any technical knowledge or background.

At a Glance

• Site status: Live and secure (HTTPS with SSL).

• Accessibility: Designed to be inclusive for all users, meeting WCAG best practices.

• Responsive design: Optimised for mobile, tablet, and desktop.

• Next steps: Finalise content updates, gather stakeholder feedback, monitor performance.

• Security: Put in place a secure website backup system; automated, encrypted off-site backups of this website to protect against losses and outages. This may involve service fees.

The attached report evaluates the new website—highlighting its inclusive design to be accessible for everyone, responsive user experience, and technical resilience.

Key recommendations are included, to further enhance the website's content, navigation, and maintenance protocols. References are included for up-to-date validation.

Report Date: August 17, 2025 

Summary

This report confirms to management that the new Combe Martin Museum foundational website already delivers a fully inclusive, WCAG-compliant experience.

It has clear navigation, responsive design, fast performance and built-in digital resilience.

The website sets a clear roadmap for future growth—expanding accessibility landmarks, adding structured data, and formalising maintenance protocols.

Accessibility landmarks define the major sections of a web page, so that assistive technologies can jump directly to key areas.

Content can be enriched with interactive timelines, and oral-history media, to keep the site engaging, robust and aligned with best-practice digital stewardship.

Looking ahead, management might consider:

• Defining success metrics (e.g., accessibility audit scores, page-view trends, Google rankings, and engagement time on interactive features).

• Establishing a regular review cycle for both technical health (security, performance) and content freshness (site-wide including exhibits updates and events listings).

• Piloting emerging features such as voice-enabled search, or Augmented Reality [AR] tours to deepen visitor immersion.

• Gathering ongoing stakeholder feedback—staff, volunteers and visitors—to prioritise enhancements that resonate with the community.

Management should consider:

• Secure Back-ups: Put in place a secure website back-up system; automated, encrypted off-site back-ups of this website to protect against losses and outages. This will involve a third-party supplier and probably service fees.

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Design & Content Best Practices

This section helps you keep every page looking polished, readable, and user-friendly—on desktop and mobile—without needing specialist skills.

• Use only high-quality photographs

  • Blurred or poor-quality images appear unprofessional to visitors.

  • For professional websites: quality photographs look better than drawings.

  • Select large, crisp, well-lit images, e.g. 800 x 600 pixels in dimensions.

  • Compress files (JPEG 80–85% or optimised PNG) so that pages load quickly.

  • Always add descriptive alt text when you upload to support accessibility.

  • Alternative text (alt text) is a brief written description of an image’s content and purpose.

  • Alt text enables screen readers to convey meaning to users who can’t see the image, and it helps search engines understand what the image depicts.

• Align and justify text for legibility

  • Keep body text left-aligned rather than fully justified to avoid uneven spacing.

  • If centred text is preferred, set centralised text in the editor.

  • Stick to a single text alignment style across headings, paragraphs, and lists.

  • Use a comfortable line length (about 60 characters) and line height around 1.5 × font size.

• Choose distinct, accessible colours

  • Build on the museum’s palette—use one primary colour, one accent, and one neutral.

  • Ensure text-to-background contrast is at least 4.5 : 1 (e.g., dark text on a light background).

  • Reserve bright accent colours for buttons and links to make actions stand out.

• Write smaller paragraphs for mobile

  • Limit paragraphs to 2–3 sentences on all pages.

  • Break longer text into bullet lists or pull-out quotes.

  • Preview on your phone: if scrolling feels endless, split up the copy further.

• Follow best website practices

  • Use clear headings (H2, H3) so readers—and search engines—can scan your content.

  • Keep navigation consistent: the menu and footer should look the same on every page.

  • Test load speed: after adding images or videos, refresh the page and aim for under 3 seconds.

  • Update link text to be descriptive (e.g., “See summer hours” instead of “Click here”).

  • Check every new page with our monthly content-review checklist (hours, contact info, alt text, links).

By sticking to these simple rules, you’ll ensure the site remains professional, attractive, fast, and easy to use—no matter who’s browsing or what device they’re on.

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