Part of keeping your site healthy is dealing with content that’s old, outdated, or inaccurate. However, that doesn’t mean you should just delete lots of pages.
Deciding whether to delete content from your website is an art. Aim for a balanced approach.
- Do: Delete content that is inaccurate in ways that are misleading or problematic.
- Do: Delete content that has little or no value because it’s outdated. (Ex: News story: “Come to our 2009 Open House next week!”)
- Do: Update inaccurate content if it just needs fixing to stay relevant.
- Don’t: Delete content simply based on its age. Old content that documents important news, events, or anything else may still have value for archiving, research, and even reminiscence.
And one more thing, when I say “delete,” I don’t mean “Trash.” I encourage people to “draft, not delete” in WordPress so that all information remains archived in your database, even if it’s not accessible to the public. Better yet, install the Archived Post Status plugin (maybe along with my Post Status Menu Items plugin!) to explicitly mark certain content as private and archived.