Vermont Marketing Web — One Unified Digital Presence

The Brief

• Vermont’s two marketing engines run as separate WordPress sites: Think Vermont (live/work/do-business) and Vermont Vacation (tourism and planning).
• Both are off the state’s unified Drupal 10 platform, ship with caching disabled, expose their REST APIs, and share no design system.
• The concept unifies them into one economic-development + tourism experience while keeping the two audiences distinct.

Audit Findings

• thinkvermont.com — WordPress with Divi (divi-plus, monarch, filter grids); cache-control: no-cache/no-store/private; full /wp-json REST API exposed.
• vermontvacation.com — WordPress with custom "bvk" theme; Gravity Forms, Google Maps, image-map, Smush; www→non-www redirect; same no-cache posture.
• Both run Cloudflare + LiteSpeed but with x-cache-enabled: False — the CDN is present but caching is switched off.
• Neither shares the state’s Drupal 10 platform or design system — two separate brands, two separate builds, two separate teams.
• Only adjacent state-funded outliers: legislature (Silverstripe), Vermont Historical Society (MODX).

Approach

• Unify both audiences under one platform and one design system, built on the state’s Drupal 10 estate.
• Keep distinct experiences: "Live & Work" and "Do Business" (from Think Vermont) plus "Visit & Plan" (from Vermont Vacation) — one codebase, two journeys.
• Turn caching back on: edge + full-page caching, WebP/AVIF images, a measurable performance budget.
• Retire the exposed REST endpoints and duplicated plugins; WCAG 2.2 AA across both journeys.
• Preserve the 802+YOU newsletter and the Free Inspiration Guide flows.

Deliverables

• One design system + component library
• Live & Work journey (jobs, moving, veteran services)
• Do Business journey (incentives, assistance, financing)
• Visit & Plan journey (things to do, regions, seasons, stays)
• Edge caching + image pipeline + performance budget
• REST API hardening
• WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility
• Newsletter + guide migration

Evidence

Audited 2026-08. Live requests to thinkvermont.com and vermontvacation.com: response headers, markup, theme/plugin paths, and exposed endpoints inspected directly.

• thinkvermont.com — WordPress + Divi (plugins verified in markup: divi-plus, monarch, divi-modules-table-maker, dp-divi-filtergrid); cache-control: no-cache / no-store / private; /wp-json REST API exposed.
• vermontvacation.com — WordPress with custom "bvk" theme; plugins verified: Gravity Forms, wp-google-maps, image-map-pro, wp-smush-pro; homepage HTML ≈ 276 KB.
• Both run Cloudflare + LiteSpeed with x-cache-enabled: False — CDN present but caching switched off.
• vermontvacation.com issues a www → non-www 301; both sit outside the state’s unified Drupal 10 platform.
• Adjacent state-funded outliers verified: legislature.vermont.gov (Silverstripe 5.2) and vermonthistory.org (MODX, PHPSESSID + assets/components/modxminify).

Timeline

Discovery 2 wks · Design system 4 wks · Build 8 wks · Content migration 4 wks · Launch + handover 2 wks (~20 weeks).