Can I tag posts by era, place, and historical figure on VeloCMS?
Yes. VeloCMS's post editor supports a full taxonomy system where tags can be structured as era (Antebellum, Civil War, Reconstruction, WW1, WW2, postwar, etc.), place (county, state, battlefield park, specific locality), and person (historical figures relevant to your research focus). Each tag generates a collection page indexed under your domain — so a researcher searching for your coverage of a specific Civil War engagement, a specific county's history, or a specific figure's role in your documented events can find it through your taxonomy as well as through individual post search. Tags also feed into the JSON-LD structured data that makes your archive findable in LLM search results when someone asks about the specific era and place you cover.
How does the primary-source citation schema work?
VeloCMS's primary-source archive post type includes a structured citation block built into the TipTap editor's /primary-source command. The citation block captures repository (full institution name as catalogued, not abbreviated), collection name as the repository catalogues it, box and folder numbers, document title and date with precision notes (year-only, year-month, or full date), and a source evaluation field distinguishing what the document establishes directly from what requires interpretation. The citation displays in a standardized format based on Chicago Manual of Style archival citation conventions and is also structured as JSON-LD schema.org/DigitalDocument metadata — so your citation is both human-readable and machine-readable for LLM-indexed research discovery.
How does the oral-history audio embed work with transcription?
VeloCMS's oral-history series post type pairs a waveform-aware audio embed with a full editorial transcription. The waveform display shows the amplitude pattern of the recording so listeners can navigate to moments of particular density or silence, identify where the speaker's emotional register changes, and locate specific passages without listening through from the start. The paired transcription sits below the embed with timestamp anchors at natural breaks — clicking a transcript paragraph jumps the audio to the corresponding moment. Editorial apparatus supports uncertain readings in brackets, cross-speaker identifications, dialect features noted without alteration, and significant pauses or non-verbal cues in editorial notation. The oral-history protocol metadata block (interviewer, date, location, consent status, access restrictions) appears as a structured header above the audio embed.
Can I create a battlefield geo-walk with GPS stops and period-map overlay?
Yes. VeloCMS's battlefield geo-walk post type is structured as a multi-stop spatial analysis where each stop has GPS coordinates (displayed on an interactive map), multiple photographs from documented compass bearings showing the terrain from that position, a period-map overlay image aligned to the modern terrain with annotation explaining the changes, primary-source citations keyed to the terrain feature being documented, and cross-references to related stops where the tactical situation connects. The stops are numbered and navigable as a sequence — readers can work through the walk in order or jump directly to a specific engagement point. The geo-tagged metadata feeds into JSON-LD structured data for location-specific research discovery.
How does the period-map overlay work?
The period-map overlay is an image annotation block in the VeloCMS editor where you upload a period-map image (a Civil War-era Hotchkiss map, an 1870s county atlas plate, a WW2 operational map) alongside a modern aerial photograph or USGS topographic image, and align them to the same terrain features. The overlay tool lets you draw annotation lines and labels connecting period map features to their modern equivalents — or noting where a period feature (an unimproved road, an open field, a mill pond) no longer exists on the modern terrain. The annotation is static (not interactive pan-and-zoom, which would require client JavaScript) but the image-pair format with labeled annotation gives readers the terrain-change context that makes the documented tactical or historical situation legible.
Can I set up a member-only research library for my society?
Yes. VeloCMS's member-only tier lets you publish historical research at two levels of access: a public post with the transcription overview, source summary, and representative photographs accessible to all readers, and a member-only tier with full high-resolution scans, complete unedited oral-history recordings, detailed access notes for private-land battlefield sites, and the most sensitive or detailed research documentation. BYOK Stripe means membership revenue goes directly to your account at 0% platform fee. Member-only research libraries are particularly suited to local-history societies where the dues-paying membership model already exists — you're converting what was a physical binder or a members-only meeting into a permanently accessible online archive with a subscriber-management system you control.
How does the society member directory work?
VeloCMS's member directory feature (on Pro and above) lets your society publish a research-interest directory where each member has a profile with era and geography specialization tags, current research projects, interlibrary loan (ILL) cooperation preferences (will share photocopies or digital scans of specific collections), and contact preference settings. The directory supports keyword search so members can find who else in the society works on a specific county, era, or topic — enabling the kind of research collaboration that historically happened only through personal relationships at monthly meetings. The directory is member-only by default, accessible only to subscribed members of your society's VeloCMS site.
What theme works best for a primary-source archive or oral-history site?
Memo Garamond — scholarly typography, EB Garamond body text, catalog-archive depth — is the primary recommendation for primary-source archives, oral-history collections, and local-history society publications. The typographic register matches the seriousness that historical research demands and makes long transcription documents readable at the depth that archival research requires. For military-history specialists and battlefield walk documentation who prefer a higher-contrast presentation with a stronger visual hierarchy for the geo-walk stop structure, Editorial Noir (high-contrast dark theme with serif display type — free on all plans) is a strong alternative. Both themes are free on all plans. See the full gallery at /themes.