George Washington’s Mount Vernon

One of The Most Popular Historic Estates in the US

Mount Vernon is the historic home of George Washington, America’s first president, situated just 15 miles south of Washington, D.C. Since opening its doors in 1860, Mount Vernon has welcomed over 96 million visitors and has become the country’s most famous historic attraction. Guests can explore Washington's Mansion and over a dozen historic outbuildings, including a blacksmith shop and stables, four beautiful gardens, a working farm, two museums, and much more.

Today, Mount Vernon is open year-round, welcoming over one million visitors annually. For many, their journey begins online at the estate's official website, one of the most popular historical web resources in the United States. This comprehensive platform offers everything from tour details, tickets, and news to historical archives, interactive content, videos, and podcasts – all in one place. The website mirrors the richness of the estate’s history, creating a seamless experience that captivates and informs visitors.

Started Small, While Thinking Big

Our partnership with the Mount Vernon team began in 2018 when they sought our expertise to support and enhance their internal ticketing system. Initially, our role focused on maintaining and improving the existing solution. However, as we delved deeper into the project and the organization’s needs, it became clear that the entire web system required an upgrade to a more modern and flexible platform.

Over time, our responsibilities expanded to include managing the entire website and its core systems, including the ticketing platform and video portal. This holistic approach allowed us to plan strategically, developing a high-performing, future-ready website that could evolve with Mount Vernon's needs.

Inevitable site technology overhaul

An outdated and over-complicated tech stack was one of the core problems the Mount Vernon’s team faced. For instance, the technologies used at that time included:

• BigTree CMS for the main website
• Silex for the ticketing platform 
• Outdated version of Slim framework for website API
• Symfony 5 for video portal 
• Outdated PHP 8 version and hosting infrastructure

The BigTree CMS no longer received system or security updates and was gradually approaching its end of life. Similarly, frameworks like Silex, Slim, and Symphony 5 were outdated and posed long-term stability issues, necessitating upgrades or replacements.

High maintenance costs were the critical consequence of this situation. This could further lead to performance and security issues that were almost impossible to fix or prevent because the tech team would face limited capacity in nearly every aspect.

One Powerful Solution for Every Need 

It was the perfect time to transition Mount Vernon’s website to a more robust and flexible platform. Considering the organization’s unique needs, we recommended migrating the website, including its ticketing system and video portal, to the latest version of Drupal.

As a certified Drupal partner, Five Jars has extensive experience implementing this technology for organizations across various industries. Drupal has consistently proven to be customizable, stable, scalable, and secure – qualities essential for Mount Vernon. With over a decade of experience working with nonprofit and cultural organizations, we’ve successfully tackled similar challenges, and Drupal-powered solutions have consistently delivered exceptional results.

The scale and complexity of Mount Vernon’s original platform posed significant challenges, but our team identified and addressed them with a detailed re-platforming roadmap. Once we aligned on timelines and resources, we began the exciting process of transitioning to a cutting-edge platform.

Improving UX and technology behind the ticketing system

The ticketing system was one of the first elements we addressed. Through several iterations, we optimized it to tackle key challenges:

• Complexity and reliance on specialized knowledge: The system was cumbersome to manage.
• CRM integration issues: API methods failed during upgrades, leading to poor user experiences.
• Subpar booking form: The online booking process was not intuitive.
• Outdated user authorization: The legacy workflow introduced security risks.

​​​​​​More integrated user experience

After analyzing user journeys for reservations and purchases, our design team reimagined the UI. The old, overloaded two-step form was replaced with an intuitive seven-step process, guiding users seamlessly to tours, tickets, promo codes, and time slots. We also added a visit timeline in the booking form’s sidebar, helping users plan their visits efficiently.

Transitioning to Drupal 10 and eliminating legacy frameworks

The original ticketing system was built on Silex, a framework that lacked the functionality needed to scale. Our team migrated the system to Drupal 10, creating a robust API to ensure smooth communication between the front and back end. This upgrade eliminated reliance on Silex and outdated libraries, significantly improving performance and maintainability.

Tessitura integration & optimization

Tessitura is a CRM system the Mount Vernon team uses for all tickets and purchases, both online and offline. It enables sophisticated customer relationship management and helps organizations capture and analyze data across multiple areas, including admissions, attendance, tickets, memberships, donor cultivation, client communications, analytics, and more.

Our team has vast experience integrating this system for various needs across many sectors. For the Mount Vernon project, we were responsible for Tessitura's smooth integration with the main web application, updates compatibility, and required customizations. Our team also helped move the checkout process to the Tessitura-powered TN Express Web (TNEW) platform and integrated Single Sign-on functionality for all users via this service. This improved the authorization process and ensured better security of all online transactions.

Building custom functionality

Although most online purchasing and ticketing functionality was realized through the Tessitura integration, some areas still required custom solutions. First, this was related to the Mount Vernon partnership program, which allows organizations to register corporate accounts accessible for multiple users, book group tours, reserve tickets, and issue invoices. 

Secondly, our client needed the ability to arrange special events, such as festivals, national holiday celebrations, charity events, and more. Our team helped build functionality with custom logic and offered the needed flexibility.

Rebuilding video portal

The video portal allows Mount Vernon’s team to offer additional value to its visitors and members, making their experience more far-reaching. Before we started our work on the portal’s enhancement, there was already an extensive library of pre-recorded video materials spanning different topics and historical aspects of George Washington’s life.

Phase 1: Streamlining video content management

The initial request for video portal improvement concerned video content management. The site administration team used to host the videos on Vimeo at first but then decided to switch entirely to YouTube. Yet, to get the video uploaded to the website, it had to be uploaded to YouTube first and then manually added to BigTree CMS. This process included filling in multiple fields, which was a waste of time.

Thus, we focused on this process automation in our first iteration of working on the video portal. Using the Symphony framework, which was an optimal solution at the time, we reorganized how video content was managed. In the new flow, the video had to be uploaded only to YouTube. Besides, we updated the navigation on the video portal, introduced new pages, and built functionality to add content exclusively for users with Mount Vernon membership status.

Phase 2: Migrating to Drupal 10

The second iteration of video portal optimization was related to the overall web platform migration to Drupal. We recommended the Mount Vernon team migrate the video portal to Drupal together with the whole website to overcome the following challenges:

• As the number of videos and users increased, the YouTube API request quota constantly blocked us. When the free limit was exceeded, the video portal could become unavailable for several hours.
• With the initial approach, our team could not introduce an internal search for better navigation across the growing library.
• Using one technology for the whole web platform would make the tech stack future-proof and ready for further enhancements.

Our engineering team performed a detailed audit and planned and flawlessly migrated the video portal to Drupal. This allowed them to immediately introduce internal search using the free, open-source solution OpenSearch. In the new approach, the videos were, as previously, uploaded to YouTube, and then via YouTube API, they were automatically transferred to Drupal CMS and hosted there. Instant synchronization between YouTube and Drupal solved the problem with the API quota.

Today’s video portal is one of the most visited website sections, containing hundreds of video materials, including live events, full-length films, podcasts, member-only content, and much more. Our engineering team now has all the opportunities to continue improving user experience and fine-tuning the search, navigation, and performance.

Replatforming from BigTree to Drupal

One of the largest and most transformative phases of our partnership with Mount Vernon was migrating their entire content-rich website from BigTree to Drupal. The site’s vast and diverse content includes hundreds of page types, blocks, and topics – ranging from encyclopedia entries and recipes to news articles and interactive features.

• Planning and preparing for the migration

The migration process required meticulous planning and preparation. Every page and block needed to be unified and adapted to fit the new CMS. Our engineers also configured all the additional functionality, including search, virtual touring, cart, permissions, roles, and more. 

• New logic for admin login

The content management team at Mount Vernon is as broad as the variety of topics the website covers. While moving to the new platform, we offered content editors the ability to log in to the admin panel via their internal system, OKTA. This streamlined access by allowing new employees to log in with a single account, which automatically granted them predefined roles and permissions.

• Streamlining and simplifying content management

To streamline content management, we introduced a clear and user-friendly admin interface built on Drupal’s Layout Builder. This approach catered to Mount Vernon’s diverse team of content editors, ensuring each stakeholder could access only the sections relevant to their role. We also developed a library of reusable components, enabling editors to easily update existing pages and create new ones without technical expertise.

• Testing and smooth rollout

BigTree CMS’s unique content organization required careful handling during the migration. We preserved the structure and layout of the old pages, retaining familiar block names to help the team navigate the new system. To facilitate onboarding, we provided detailed guides and documentation for Mount Vernon’s team.

A steady partner in an evolving partnership

We’ve been collaborating closely with the Mount Vernon team since 2018, and this is our largest project to date. As the scope of our responsibilities working on the website grew, so did our relationships – evolved from handling some specific tech tasks to trustworthy business partnerships.

Seamless communication made all the difference in this case. From our side, we ensured clarity and transparency on all the tech choices we were making and why we were making them, the progress of our work, and our future steps. The Mount Vernon team, on their side, was always open to improvements and trusted our expertise. 

In 2023, the team working on the Mount Vernon website had a marvelous chance to visit the estate. For sure, these were some of the brightest days in the history of Five Jars.

What we achieved

The overall result of this large-scale migration project is a secure, well-performing, and functionally rich website based on Drupal. It now allows all the Mount Vernon teams to effectively manage high volumes of information and offer every visitor a comprehensive user experience, from exploring historical content in multiple formats to planning their offline trips to the estate.

Today, we continue our collaboration with the Mount Vernon team. The full-scale migration to Drupal opened up multiple opportunities for future enhancements and new projects our team is eager to onboard and lead.