History Atlas
The Interactive Atlas of World History
- In continuous operation since 2001
- 62,000+ events across 60 subregions
- Django, HTMX and PostgreSQL
History Atlas is Jeff Moran's interactive, map-based reference to world history, explored across 12 globe faces and 28 regions through dated events linked to their sources. Red Crow Digital rebuilt, redesigned and extended the platform.
Challenge
25 years of data, ageing stack
Over 25 years the Atlas had built up a huge, interconnected body of data - events, people, places, periods, commodities and topics - on a stack that was ageing and hard to extend. It still ran on an AngularJS frontend and a separate Elasticsearch service that were costly to maintain, and most of its content was hard for search engines to reach.
Solution
Rebuilt, redesigned, extended
- A full rebuild with server-rendered pages and HTMX in place of the old AngularJS frontend, and PostgreSQL full-text search replacing Elasticsearch
- A complete redesign of the public site - home, region, event and search pages - with a persistent context bar, a year slider, and historical maps composited on demand for any region and date range
- New ways to explore - curated Threads, Guided Pathways configured from the admin, and an illustrated plate viewer linked to key events - plus a cite-this tool with APA, MLA, Chicago and BibTeX formats
- SEO rebuilt from the ground up: structured data, unique metadata and sitemaps covering every event, person, place and period, so the full archive can be found in search
- Editorial tools for the Atlas's curator, including bulk CSV imports, with the platform running on AWS behind CloudFront caching, firewall rules and rate limiting
Results
70,000 pages open to search
- Over 70,000 pages now open to search engines
- A modern platform with new features shipping regularly since the takeover
Explore the Atlas for yourself at historyatlas.com.