IT’S NOT ALL COOKIN’ … OR GRILLIN’ … TIME
Sometimes, it’s clean up time! And sometimes it’s knowin’ what to keep and what to throw away. In a ceramic grill, the ash from the last burn can’t be reused, but the unburned pieces of charcoal can be. So, cleaning the ceramic grill involves separating the ash from the chunks that can be reused.
Clean up is always easiest if you start with the right supplies. Paul Sidoriak explains in his Grilling Montana post about the benefits of using lump charcoal, “The main reason Hardwood lump charcoal is my first choice for a Kamado grill is that it produces less ash.” Paul also discusses where to get quality lump charcoal.
Do You Have Technical Ashes that Need to be Sifted Out on your Website?
And, there will be less cleanup on your website, if you start with high quality software. For many sites, that is choosing themes and plugins / extensions /modules.
Generally, when I first start working on a website, I have to do a lot of clean up.
- Users that are no longer associated with the organization
- Unsupported, insecure plugins, extensions, modules, etc.
- Unused plugins, extensions, modules, etc.
- Unsupported, insecure themes
- Unused themes
- Old pages that no longer represent your business well.
- Old images that are poor or out of style
- Extraneous files from old software
It’s common, when I first start reviewing a site, to find out that about half or more of the plugins should be replaced with well maintained plugins or just deleted altogether because the functionality is not used or is doubled up with another installed plugin. Sometimes there are many, many themes left installed on the site from the process of testing various themes. The normal clean up process after building or updating a site should have left the site clean, but often that last step is overlooked in the joy of the development process being finished. And, over time, new features are added to websites without consideration of the software that runs the out-of-date features.
How long it takes to clean up years of the accumulation of old software often comes as quite a surprise to a website owner. But the process of going through all that old junk also serves as a springboard to remember old ideas that may still be useful or new ideas to replace old ideas.
Do You Have Content Ashes that Need to be Sifted Out on Your Website?
It’s important to be aware of the content on your site and whether it’s up-to-date with your business. If you have a Content Manager, it’s also important to review what that Content Manager is posting. I know of one site where the previous content manager was going to other blogs and websites can copying and pasting. Not only is it illegal to do that without express, written permission, but the content she was posting didn’t have any tie-in with the products or culture of her client’s website. It took some work to clean up the mess.
Recently, I met a client to discuss what tasks need to be done for their site to have a clear marketing message because there is a lot of old stuff. They probably haven’t reviewed the content on their site for years. I’m so glad they now have an ethical marketing person inside the business who can make those decisions and update the content!