WordPress Site Cleanup: 3 Simple But Critical Ways to Do It

Making a company’s first website in WordPress is a momentous event. It marks the beginning of showing the online world their brand as they build their online presence. WordPress site cleanup is just as important.

Over time, the company would probably enhance their website by adding new plugins and themes and continuously streaming new content each passing day. However, when the site’s size increases, it risks the speed of its accessibility since it can slow the loading time.

On top of that, it would become more challenging to manage the site. With this in mind, investing in some time cleaning up the WordPress website is essential in improving the user’s and management’s experience.

What are the Benefits of Cleaning Up Your Site?

As time passes, it is common to accumulate some unnecessary data and content on the website. Some site owners choose to turn a blind eye to this, but there are benefits to cleaning up a website.

Firstly, cleaning up these junk files ensures that the site will run smoothly and perform well. It doesn’t mean removing everything; however, choosing what is essential to keep and what not to.

Secondly, it promotes doing valuable maintenance tasks such as looking for updates and broken links. It keeps you up-to-date with the latest trends and features that you can add to your site, creating a more appealing and engaging online platform.

Lastly, cleaning up helps organize your data and content because the process shows which information, photo, or articles are no longer relevant.

3 Simple Ways to Perform WordPress Site Cleanup

The WordPress site cleanup can be overwhelming when it’s never been done before, but it shouldn’t scare any site owners. There are simple ways to clean up their website, and it’s easy to do by thinking of the goal—to improve user and management experience.

Delete Unneeded Themes and Plugins

Themes serve as templates that are used in WordPress to define the display and appearance of the site. You can customize and change these themes depending on the needs of your company.

However, changing it repeatedly over time can lead to a strain on the website. It is best to deactivate any themes that are not being used currently and remove them altogether. The same applies to plugins while keeping in mind to be careful about what to cut off.

Update WordPress Regularly

WordPress has thousands of contributors creating content to make it better for everyone. Hence, it is updated frequently with new features, critical bugs, and security fixes.

If the old version is used, it can foster many problems like security holes, compatibility errors, and overall poor performance. To avoid this, head over to WordPress and click “Update Now.”

Cut Off Old Post Revisions

Apart from themes and plugins, the clutters in the site also contain old revisions of posts, staying in the background, and creating unnecessary bloat. It can be done quickly by using a plugin.

For instance, the “Optimize Database after Deleting Revisions” is a plugin that decides precisely which revisions to keep and which to discard. There are also several other useful cleanup features for deleting spammed comments and unused tags.

DIY Vs Team of Expert

WordPress site cleanup is something you can do on your own. If you are technically proficient, you can learn the basics of updating the WordPress version and installing plugins.

Doing it yourself can save you a few thousand dollars every year. But, it could eat a chunk of your time especially if you haven’t updated your site for a long period.

Alternatively, you can hire a trusted expert to maintain your site. This expert could be an individual or a team. The choice is yours.

The greatest advantage is you can focus on the most important part of your business. However, the biggest disadvantage of hiring an expert is cost.

Conclusion

Whichever way you chose, WordPress site cleanup is essential. It protects your site against attackers and a protected site means lesser worry.