Sign Up for Lighthouse!
Lighthouse is a new Delaware state government website design system offering accessibility compliance, research-driven UI improvements, and an easier editing process for Delaware state agency WordPress websites.
The Delaware Government Information Center (GIC) is working to move as many of our currently supported agency sites into the Lighthouse platform as possible, as quickly as possible.
Our sign-up form below is only for Delaware state agencies whose websites are currently supported by the GIC.
Requests will only be considered when the form is completed in full by an authorized representative of a GIC-supported state website. The form contains specific choices critical to the creation of your site map and homepage prototype, which is how our website construction process begins.
This process is ideal for migrating websites with a couple hundred pages or less. It’s important to note that the state’s very largest sites, or those the GIC is directed to prioritize, will need a higher degree of review and will undergo a different migration process than offered below.
Launching Lighthouse with a Smaller Version of Your Website
In most cases, the sites being migrated to Lighthouse will be launched in a much smaller, scaled-down format than the current site. Website editors and agency stakeholders need to identify the most critical information for launch with the mindset of weaving in supportive content after the migration to Lighthouse. The goal is to build out from launch.
Some agencies have websites with hundreds of pages and thousands of PDFs. To be as efficient and helpful as possible for our end users, we will not migrate all content to the new Lighthouse site. Your evaluation and knowledge are key in helping with this process.
So, we’ll handle the initial launch of a streamlined version of your site with your input. Then we’ll set you up for success with a plan to review and build out your own pages from there. Agencies will be given the tools and training to evaluate the remaining content and add it, archive it, or delete it as they see fit.
Your form submission will drive the overall initial content and navigation decisions for your website. It is important to note that the Creative team will only be able to accommodate critical feedback to the design before handing off to the development team. Once the design is handed off to dev, we are counting on your faith in our ability to make some basic design/usability decisions based on our expertise in these areas. If subsequent changes are necessary, Lighthouse pages can be edited, added, and deleted as usual through the WordPress UI.
This is not only necessary for our workflow with so many agencies but also creates a built-in internal review process at each agency level. There is much outdated content on our state sites that can be deleted or moved into an archive section, which your new Lighthouse site will have, built in!
Evaluating Your Current Website
Before proceeding with the form below, please make sure you have given your website a thorough evaluation. Your process should include the following criteria:
- A list of all the pages on your site to review. You can generate this yourself by simply adding the suffix /page-sitemap.xml to your website’s URL. (ex: https://gic.delaware.gov/page-sitemap.xml)
- A site analytics report, to give you tangible data about how your current site is being used. If you have access to Google Analytics, you can retrieve this data yourself.
Alternatively, the GIC is happy to generate a free report containing data about your site’s most-visited pages and links, as well as your site’s most-and-least-downloaded PDFs and other downloads. This only applies to agencies whose sites we currently support. We can usually complete this request within a week.
Current Lighthouse WordPress Sites for Reference
IMPORTANT: Before beginning the form below, please make sure…
1. …you are an authorized representative of a Delaware state agency that is already working with the GIC.
2. …you will be the point of contact for us throughout the Lighthouse upgrade process. (If not, please have that person proceed.)
3. …you are prepared to provide specific decisions about your website’s homepage, top navigation, and content needed to launch.
