Over the span of a year starting in late 2017, I led a comprehensive migration of SFMOMA’s website from a legacy Django-based system to a modern WordPress architecture. This strategic move was driven by the need for greater platform stability, broader community support, and a more sustainable long-term development path. WordPress, with its vast ecosystem and robust tooling, provided an ideal foundation for the museum’s evolving digital needs.
As both full-stack developer and technical lead on the project, I was responsible for the architecture and building of a custom WordPress theme tailored to SFMOMA’s visual identity and content strategy. In addition to building their theme, I developed several custom plugins that handled the ingestion and transformation of complex data from their existing collection and asset management systems. This included writing custom integrations to preserve metadata fidelity and ensure a seamless transition of tens of thousands of records, artworks, and media assets.
The result was a highly performant and easily maintainable site that empowered SFMOMA’s content and curatorial teams to publish more efficiently while laying the groundwork for future digital initiatives. You can see the live site here: sfmoma.org