Sector(s)
Project Team
Avatar New York worked with the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism to plan, design, migrate, and develop the website. ARAS provided collection expertise and reviewed the research and membership workflows.
The Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism (ARAS) is a nonprofit organization preserving approximately 18,000 images with scholarly commentary. Its collection supports students, scholars, artists, therapists, and others researching symbolism and cultural history.
ARAS partnered with Avatar New York to rebuild its aging Drupal website. The project brought public content, protected archive records, research tools, payments, and membership management into a cohesive experience, while preserving decades of material and the relationships that make the archive valuable.
About the project
The challenge
The previous website contained decades of valuable material, but its aging technology and complex organization made discovery and administration difficult. Modernization needed to preserve scholarly context, existing accounts, and saved research while serving both individual members and participating institutions.
The solution
The rebuild combined responsive design with research tools tailored to the archive:
- Separate public and archive searches help visitors find resources appropriate to their access.
- A visual timeline places matching cultural headings across regions and historical eras. Selecting a marker narrows results while retaining the original keyword, helping researchers follow symbolism across traditions and time.
- Related records and saved research lists support continued exploration.
- Stripe integration connects membership purchases and subscription management with Drupal accounts.
- Group authorization codes and institutional IP access support different membership arrangements.
- Expiration emails prompt legacy members to renew before their existing access ends.
Custom migration tools transferred archive records, users, saved lists, articles, documents, newsletters, galleries, images, and classification data from the previous Drupal site. Preserving these relationships was essential to maintaining the collection’s usefulness.
A custom responsive theme presents the archive alongside membership information, publications, programs, and donations. The resulting platform supports ARAS’s public mission and subscription services without treating them as separate websites.
Outcome
ARAS now has a unified website for discovering its collection, joining as a member, and conducting research. Staff can manage public content and membership access within the same platform.
Why Drupal was chosen
Drupal’s structured content, taxonomy, and permissions suited an archive where images connect to scholarly descriptions, cultural classifications, historical periods, and related records.
Continuing with Drupal also provided a migration path for the existing collection and member data. Its search integrations supported distinct experiences for public resources and the protected archive, while its extensibility allowed individual subscriptions, group memberships, and institutional access to work alongside content management.
These capabilities let ARAS retain its specialized research workflows while modernizing how visitors discover and use the collection.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
Search API and Search API Solr support searchable indexes for public content and archive records. Facets provides search refinement and supplies cultural-heading data used by the custom visual timeline.
Paragraphs gives editors structured components for public-facing pages. IP Login supports institutional access alongside custom membership and archive permissions.
Migrate Plus and Migrate Tools supported the transfer from the previous Drupal site, with custom source plugins for specialized archive data and saved research.
A custom Tailwind CSS theme provides responsive layouts. Custom Drupal modules implement research lists, timeline behavior, Stripe subscriptions, group access, and legacy membership expiration emails.
