Detox Your Website

It’s that time of year again, waist bands are a little too tight and we are feeling the results of holiday over indulgence. Many people turn to a body detox in January, but can I also suggest a detox of your website.

Why Detox Your Website?

Just like a body, a website can accumulate waste that it does not need, this waste takes up disk space, database space and can impact the performance of your site.

Here are four areas of website detox and some health checks you can do to start 2016 with a sprightly clean website.

Remove Unwanted Plugins And Themes

Look through your installed plugin and theme list, and delete any that are unused. Even if they are not in use they are taking up disk space and harbouring potentially harmful code if not updated regularly.

Look at your list of active plugins and ask your self “Do I really need this functionality”?

If not disable and delete the plugin in question.  Every plugin enabled is taking a small slice of your available memory.

Delete Old Content

I’m currently in the middle of removing old content that does not serve my business any more.  I’m removing things such as:

• Old sales offers.
• Offers for services I’m no longer doing (custom plugin development anyone).
• Reviews of plugins that are no longer available.
• Anything from my old archive (pre 2010) that is not evergreen.

Optimize Your Database

Your poor old database goes through a hard time, and is very often neglected. I recommend at least on a quarterly basis you optimize your database.

I wrote a detailed article on optimizing your database so I’ll not cover ground I’ve already walked.

Check For Broken Links

The interwebs are a fluid place, and links out from your site to other articles can sometimes break.

We also change links internally on our site (for example when deleting post for detox purposes)

Links break so it is good practise to check your links on a regular basis.  The good news is that there is a plugin called Broken Link Checker which will trawl through all your pages and create a list of broken links for you to fix. Here is a video to show you how.

https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/broken-link-checker/

Three Site Health Checks

Once you have done your tidy, here are three health checks to ensure your site is in top top condition.

Google mobile check – run your site through this checker to make sure it is mobile compliant and works effectively on phones

Google page speed insights – is your site loading fast enough in the eyes of Google

Google malware checker – has your site been hacked or is your site free of malware?

Wrap Up

Start 2016 with a fit and healthy website to power your business through this coming year. Why not detox your website.

Photo Credit: Robert Gourley via Compfight cc