🚀 Getting Started
Overview of what's included on Professional+
Welcome to the full platform
The Professional, Institution, and Enterprise plans unlock every feature Vitrine has to offer: everything in the Essentials plans, plus analytics, event ticketing, compliance documentation tools, multi-person staff accounts, document storage, and a complete multi-page public website including About and Visit pages.
This guide walks you through each feature area in detail. Use the sidebar on the left to jump to what you need.
Up to 5,000 objects on Professional, 100,000 on Institution, or unlimited on Enterprise. 10 images per object. Document attachments and depositor tracking included.
Home, collection, about, visit, and events pages, all customisable and branded to your museum.
See who's visiting your site, which objects are most popular, where your traffic comes from, and how your audience is growing over time.
Create events, set capacity, and accept online bookings directly through your Vitrine website. Integrated with Stripe for paid tickets.
Invite team members with role-based permissions. Up to 10 accounts on Professional, unlimited on Institution and Enterprise.
Track provenance, rights, conservation condition, and loan agreements across your entire collection, with a live compliance score.
How this guide is organised
Each section of the sidebar covers one feature area in detail:
- Your Collection: managing objects, uploading documents, and recording acquisition data
- Your Public Site: the full multi-page website, visit information, and SEO
- Analytics: understanding your audience and your site's performance
- Ticketing & Events: creating events and managing bookings
- Staff & Roles: inviting your team and controlling access levels
- Compliance: provenance, rights, conservation, and loan documentation
- Settings: account, plan, billing, and museum details
Signing up or upgrading
Upgrading from a lower plan to Professional is seamless. All your existing catalogue data, images, and site customisations carry over. There's no need to re-enter anything.
🏛️ Your Collection
Manage your collection at scale
Collection management on Professional+
On Professional and above, the collection catalogue expands significantly. You can hold up to 5,000 objects on Professional, 100,000 on Institution, and unlimited on Enterprise. Each object supports up to 10 images.
Beyond the larger capacity, Professional plans add several capabilities not available on Community:
- Document storage: attach PDFs, scans, and other files directly to object records (1 GB on Professional, 10 GB on Institution, unlimited on Enterprise)
- Depositor tracking: record donor details, entry method, GDPR consent status, and whether a receipt was issued
- Extended metadata: provenance chains, rights and reproduction status, conservation condition records, and loan agreement tracking
Adding and editing objects
Adding objects on Professional works the same way as on Essentials, with additional tabs visible on the object detail page for Provenance, Conservation, Rights, and Documents.
Bulk importing from a spreadsheet
If you have an existing catalogue in a spreadsheet, you can import it directly rather than entering objects one by one. This is the fastest way to get a large collection into Vitrine.
For large collections, consider importing in batches of 500–1,000 rows. It's easier to spot and fix errors in a smaller set, and you can review each batch in the catalogue before moving on to the next.
The CSV import creates new object records; it does not update existing ones. If you need to correct records you've already imported, edit them individually on their detail pages.
Document attachments
Documents can be attached directly to any object record. Use this for acquisition receipts, condition reports, loan agreements, rights licences, insurance certificates, or any other supporting paperwork.
All document storage counts against your plan's storage quota. You can see how much you've used at any time in Settings → Plan. If you're running low, you can upgrade to Institution for 10 GB, or delete documents no longer needed from individual object pages.
Depositor and acquisition records
When objects enter your collection through donation, bequest, or purchase, you can record the full acquisition details (including depositor contact information and GDPR consent) directly on the object.
QR codes and object labels
Every object in Vitrine has a unique QR code that can be printed as a label. Scanning the code takes visitors or staff directly to the object's detail page, useful for gallery labels, storage tags, and loan paperwork.
🌐 Your Public Site
A complete multi-page museum website
A full museum website
On Professional and above, your Vitrine site is a complete, multi-page public website: not just a collection browser, but a proper online home for your institution. Visitors land on a homepage with your featured objects and branding, then navigate to a collection browser, an About page, a Visit page, and (if you use ticketing) an Events page.
Every page is mobile-optimised, accessible, and loads quickly. You don't need a web developer to set any of it up.
Plan your visit
Victoria Hamlet Textiles Collection · Open daily, 10:00–18:00
Your site includes:
- Home: your museum name, tagline, description, and featured objects
- Collection: a searchable, filterable browser of all your published objects
- About: your museum's story, team, mission, and facilities
- Visit: opening hours, admission details, address, accessibility info, and directions
- Events: upcoming events with online booking (requires ticketing to be set up)
The Site Builder
Everything about your public website is controlled from Site Builder in the dashboard. It's divided into tabs:
- Appearance: template, accent colour, and logo
- Content: tagline, description, about text, featured objects, social links, and SEO
- Visit info: opening hours, admission prices, accessibility, and directions
Changes are previewed in a live panel on the right. Click Publish in the top-right corner to push your changes to the live site.
Writing your About page
The About page gives visitors context about your museum: its history, its collection focus, the people behind it, and its facilities. It's also one of the first things funders and grant bodies look at.
Setting up your Visit page
The Visit page is often the most practically useful page on a museum website. Visitors check it before travelling to make sure the museum is open and to plan their journey. Keeping it accurate and up to date is one of the highest-value things you can do.
Set a reminder in your calendar to review the Visit page whenever your hours change, especially around Christmas, bank holidays, or temporary closures. Out-of-date visit information is one of the most common and frustrating problems visitors encounter on museum websites.
SEO: helping people find you on Google
Vitrine sites are structured to be picked up by search engines by default, but you can improve your search performance by setting a custom meta title and description.
📊 Analytics
Understand who visits your site
Analytics
The Analytics section shows you how people are finding and using your public collection website. All data is collected by Vitrine directly. No third-party cookies, no Google Analytics, no tracking scripts that put consent banners on your site.
At the top of the analytics page you'll find three headline numbers: page views (total number of individual page loads), unique visitors (distinct people, based on session data), and average time on site. Alongside each is a percentage showing the change from the previous equivalent period.
Below the headline numbers, a bar chart shows page views broken down by day across your selected date range. Use this to spot patterns: peaks after social media posts, dips during school holidays, the effect of a press mention.
Further down, you'll find:
- Top objects: the individual object pages that attracted the most visits
- Traffic sources: a breakdown showing whether visitors arrived directly (typing the URL or from a bookmark), via a search engine, or from a social media link
Changing the date range
Understanding your most-viewed objects
Your top objects list is one of the most actionable pieces of data in analytics. The objects people are seeking out are the ones worth investing more time in: better photos, richer descriptions, more provenance detail. A well-documented popular object reflects well on your whole collection.
Understanding traffic sources
Exporting analytics data
🎟️ Ticketing & Events
Create events and sell tickets online
Event ticketing
Vitrine's built-in ticketing system lets you create events, manage capacity, and accept online bookings directly through your public website, without a separate platform like Eventbrite or TicketTailor.
How the whole system works end-to-end:
- You create an event in the dashboard and set a date, capacity, and ticket price (£0 for free events)
- The event appears automatically on the Events page of your public site
- Visitors book tickets through the public-facing booking form, entering their name and email
- For paid events, payment is processed by Stripe and goes directly to your connected bank account
- Both you and the attendee receive an automated confirmation email
- You track attendance and manage bookings from the event's dashboard page on the day
Vitrine charges a 2% platform fee on paid ticket sales. Standard Stripe processing fees (typically 1.4% + 25p for UK cards) also apply. There is no fee at all for free events.
Setting up payments (required for paid tickets)
Before you can charge for tickets, you need to connect your bank account via Stripe Connect. This is a one-time setup; you don't need to repeat it for every event.
Free events don't require a Stripe connection. You can start using the booking system straight away for free-entry events without going through the payment setup.
Creating an event
Managing bookings
Refunding and cancelling bookings
When a refund is issued, Stripe's processing fee is not returned. Only the net amount that was paid to you will be refunded to the customer. For example, if you received £7.39 after fees on an £8 ticket, the customer will be refunded £7.39, not £8.00.
Editing a published event
Vitrine does not automatically email existing attendees when you edit an event. If you change the date or time, notify them separately by emailing attendees directly from the Bookings tab, or by sending a message to the email addresses listed there.
👥 Staff & Roles
Invite your team and manage access
Staff accounts
Professional plans support up to 10 staff accounts. Institution and Enterprise plans support unlimited staff. Each team member gets their own individual login; they don't share credentials with anyone else. Each is assigned a role that precisely controls what they can see and do within the system.
The four roles and what each can do:
- Admin: full access to everything: collections, site builder, events, compliance, staff management, and billing. Reserve this for senior staff who need to manage the account itself.
- Curator: can add, edit, and manage objects and site content. Can create and manage events. Can view analytics. Cannot manage staff or access billing.
- Registrar: can view and update all object records, including compliance data (provenance, conservation, rights, documents). Cannot change site settings, manage events, or view analytics.
- Volunteer: read-only access to the collection catalogue. Can view object records but cannot make any changes. Useful for researchers or temporary helpers who need to look things up without the risk of accidentally editing anything.
Inviting a team member
If someone doesn't receive their invitation email (check their spam folder first), you can resend it: find their entry in the Staff list, click their name, and click Resend invitation.
Changing a staff member's role
You can change a person's role at any time without affecting their access to any other systems.
Removing a staff member
If you want to temporarily suspend access without fully removing someone (for example, a volunteer taking a long break), removing them and re-inviting them later is the simplest approach. Their existing Vitrine account will pick up where it left off when they accept the new invitation.
Role permissions at a glance
| Feature | Admin | Curator | Registrar | Volunteer | |---|---|---|---|---| | View objects | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | | Add & edit objects | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | | Manage compliance data | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | | Attach documents | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | — | | Edit site content | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | | Manage events & bookings | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | | View analytics | ✓ | ✓ | — | — | | Invite & remove staff | ✓ | — | — | — | | Access billing & plan | ✓ | — | — | — |
🛡️ Compliance
Collections documentation and due diligence
Collections compliance
The Compliance section helps you build and maintain the documentation that responsible museum practice requires. Vitrine tracks five key areas across your entire collection and gives you a live score: the percentage of your objects with complete documentation.
The compliance dashboard shows you the overall score at the top, and below it a breakdown by category, showing how many objects have each piece of information recorded. Clicking any category reveals the specific objects that are missing that data.
The five areas tracked:
- Provenance: the ownership and custody history of each object, from its origin to the present day
- Acquisition method: how the object entered your collection (purchase, donation, bequest, transfer, field collection, or unknown)
- Conservation condition: the current physical state of the object, with a condition rating and descriptive notes
- Rights and reproduction: copyright status and any licensing restrictions on reproducing images of the object
- Loan agreements: documentation for any objects currently on loan in or out of your institution
Vitrine's compliance tools are designed around the UK's Spectrum collections management standard and align with the documentation requirements for Arts Council England museum accreditation.
Checking your compliance score
Recording provenance
Provenance is the documented history of an object: who owned it, where it was, and how it passed from hand to hand before arriving in your collection. Good provenance records are essential for due diligence, especially around culturally sensitive objects.
Even a partial provenance record is better than none. Record what you know with confidence, and use notes to flag gaps (e.g. "Ownership between 1910 and 1962 unverified"). A documented acknowledgement of uncertainty is more credible than a blank record.
Recording acquisition method
Conservation condition
Rights and reproduction
Loan agreements
When a loan ends, remember to update both the object's status (back to On Display or In Storage) and add an end date to the loan record. This keeps your compliance dashboard accurate.
⚙️ Settings
Account, plan, billing, and preferences
Settings & account
The Settings section is where you manage your profile, your museum details, your subscription, billing history, and document storage. Click Settings at the bottom of the left sidebar to reach it.
Your profile
Plan and billing
Document storage
If you're approaching your storage limit on Professional (1 GB), consider whether any older or superseded documents can be removed. Open an object's Documents tab, find the file, and click the delete icon next to it. Alternatively, upgrade to Institution for 10 GB of storage.
Museum details
Cancelling your subscription
If you have staff members with Curator, Registrar, or Volunteer roles, they will lose access to the dashboard when your plan reverts to Community (which only supports a single account). They won't be deleted, but they'll be unable to sign in until you re-upgrade to a paid plan.