Platform development
Yuin Digital Keeping Place
A virtual space to honour, protect and share Yuin knowledge, language and culture for future generations
The Yuin Digital Keeping Place is a culturally grounded digital platform created to preserve, share, and celebrate Yuin knowledge, language, stories, and history for current and future generations.
Developed in partnership with the SharingStories Foundation and shaped through extensive consultation with the Yuin community, the platform was designed to be more than a website. It needed to function as a living digital space that supports truth-telling, education, cultural continuity, and respectful engagement with Country and community.
Forte Marketing was engaged to lead the technical development and implementation of the platform, translating a comprehensive strategic and UX planning process into a scalable, accessible, and culturally respectful digital experience.
The Challenge
Unlike a traditional content-driven website, the Digital Keeping Place needed to serve a broad range of audiences: from Yuin community members and Elders, to educators, researchers, and the general public.
The platform also needed to manage a large and evolving collection of rich media and cultural content, including stories, timelines, video and audio recordings, language resources, interactive maps, and cultural archives. At the same time, it had to respect cultural protocols and community ownership while remaining intuitive to navigate and simple for non-technical administrators to manage. All while being built to scale for future communities and content growth.
The Approach
The project was built on a collaborative and user-centred process that combined strategic planning, UX research, cultural consultation, and technical implementation. Extensive discovery and planning had already been undertaken by SharingStories Foundation before development commenced, and our role was to bring those strategic foundations to life through a robust and scalable web platform.
A major focus throughout the build was ensuring the platform remained culturally respectful, highly accessible, easy to navigate, and flexible for future growth.
The Solution
The platform allows users to explore content through multiple pathways: topics, media types, language groups, timelines, stories, and custodian profiles. All of this complemented with a custom-built search engine to improve findability across different audience groups, creating an intuitive experience that can grow alongside the platform.
The website was built on WordPress, selected for its flexibility and ease of use for content authors. We developed a custom framework with reusable templates, custom post types and taxonomies, and structured publishing workflows, allowing community contributors and administrators to manage content confidently without needing advanced technical support.
A key feature of the platform is the design and development of an interactive, timeline-based content exploration that creates an immersive experience while supporting multiple ways to engage with cultural content.
Accessibility was a core priority throughout development. The platform is designed to serve users across different literacy and digital skill levels, perform reliably on desktop and mobile, and meet accessibility best practices.
The Outcome
The Yuin Digital Keeping Place now provides a powerful digital home for cultural preservation, education, and community connection. The platform provides community members, educators, and the broader public with improved access to Yuin stories, language, and knowledge, with flexible tools to support long-term content growth and governance.
More than a technical achievement, the project demonstrates how digital technology can support cultural continuity and storytelling in meaningful and respectful ways, creating a long-term foundation for sharing Yuin knowledge with future generations.
Let's get to work
If you want your next marketing or web design initiative to be part of your success story, we’d love to hear from you. If you have a project in mind, but aren’t sure where to start, you can book a one hour free consultation with our team.
