It’s Time to Sign Up for Lighthouse!

By GIC Published on September 24th, 2025

Last updated on September 24th, 2025

It’s an exciting time for Delaware state agency websites, and we have an exciting announcement:

We have created a queue for Delaware agencies looking to upgrade their websites!

Those who have been following this blog are pretty up to speed at this point regarding the pending WCAG Accessibility Deadline (4/24/26). They are also hopefully aware that we have been building and now deploying the Lighthouse design system to help agencies meet that deadline.

The urgency of that goal combined with an uptick in demand has led us to a new streamlined approach to this mission.

It will all culminate with the option to sign your agency up for a streamlined migration to Lighthouse. But this option will require some content decisions on your part first. Please note that this option is only available to agencies that are already working with the GIC on their websites.

Revised Content Best Practices

Once upon a time, not long ago, it was considered a website best practice to have as much content mass as possible, and the more pages you had, the better your search engine ranking would be. As a result, many people were encouraged to create individual pages with brief amounts of content, or that serve only as a go-between to a form or another page.

Huge piles of paperwork are stacked in an office representing inefficiency and disorganization

The search engine spiders have grown wiser, however, and can actually see these extraneous pages as fluff that will diminish the site’s legitimacy assessment and SEO ranking. More importantly, these small pages are increasingly seen as an accessibility issue, as their function can be unclear or misleading depending on the quality of their headings and link titling. At best, they are often unnecessary and diminish a visitor’s experience.

We are asking agencies to do the initial legwork on their own sites, to review those pages, those PDFs, and other content and come to us with a general idea of what should stay and what should not.

Size and Scope Challenges

The reality we’re working with is that some Delaware state websites are fairly small, and others contain hundreds of pages and thousands of PDFs. So, we are asking agencies to launch their new site with the smallest amount of content possible, understanding that some government information and forms are regulatory or crucial for the public to have access.

After that launch of the starter site, agency website stakeholders will need to evaluate old content and create their own new pages to bring over viable content that didn’t make the initial launch. (Note: There will be some exceptions made in cases where regulatory or other must-have information is concerned.)

This may sound challenging but it’s important to remember that this new format offers templates so you and your team can easily begin adding additional pages as soon as you launch. The GIC will also be here to offer analytics data and to provide training and support through this process!

A closeup of a magnifying glass looking at a screen that has graphs and other icons on it and surrounding it

Consider Your Content Options

This provides a good opportunity for agencies to evaluate their content and consider the options before republishing old content.

Evaluate and Delete
Does every page or PDF file still need to be on the site at all? Things like press releases from many years ago can be saved locally (in case of public request) and deleted altogether.

Combine Pages
Many agency websites have a lot of information spread out on multiple pages. This can happen naturally as content is added to over time. This is a chance to thoughtfully combine some pages where it makes sense.

Archive Section
Older content that may still be useful can be kept in an archive section, which means it does not have to be remediated by the deadline unless a specific request comes in for it. There are other rules for archiving that we discussed in a previous post.

Here’s what we’re going to ask of you in order to get your agency in the queue for Lighthouse:

Evaluate your current content.
Identify your audience. (We will create an analytics report for you!)
Make some specific decisions about how to get to that smallest viable launch site.

Ready to start building your new Lighthouse website?? Let’s go!!

Get Started with the Lighthouse Signup Form

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