Every person wants to be organized in their life so that everything is under control and consistent. You always remove unnecessary things from your home to keep it clean. The same applies to your workspace, especially if you are using a WordPress site for your business. To make it clean, you must put in the effort and remove all the unnecessary things. To be precise, users come to you to purchase some product or service and they do not care about everything else that you have singapore b2b leads
posted. Therefore, your site should have a specific purpose and stick to it on every page. Posting irrelevant data that is not related to your niche is just a waste of effort that will only reduce the value of your brand.
Contents hide
1 Steps to Clean Up WordPress Installation
1.1 Remove unnecessary plugins
1.2 Keep navigation uncluttered
1.3 Organize the site content
1.4 Keep an eye on relevance
1.5 Run updates regularly
1.6 Monitor the speed of your site
1.7 Refresh your admin panel
2 Conclusion
2.1 Related publications:
Steps to Clean Up a WordPress Installation
There are various tactics you can implement on your WordPress site to make it user-friendly and ultimately maximize visitor engagement .
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Remove unnecessary plugins
While plugins are one of the most important elements of any WordPress site, using inactive or poorly designed plugins can slow down your site , which is not a smart decision. Simply delete or deactivate plugins that you don’t use. Moreover, consider replacing some of your current plugins with ones that serve multiple purposes ( Jetpack is a great example of a single plugin that offers multiple features). Focus on your requirements and narrow down the list accordingly (don’t be a plugin hoarder).
Keep navigation uncluttered
Keep your navigation clean. Remove unnecessary categories and be sure to use appropriate parent and child categories for easy searching. Make sure your navigation highlights the most important pages, and you can use category tags and widgets to offer readers access to more content . If your site requires a lot of links, consider adding a mega menu. A mega menu offers your site visitors large lists of information while still allowing you to keep your main navigation simple. Plugins like Uber Menu, Mega Main Menu, and Hero Menu offer fantastic mega menu options that work well with most WordPress themes .
Organize your website content
If your site has a lot of content , organize it in a structured way by grouping it into paragraphs. Also, remember to use proper headings . Your posts and pages should have H1 headings, and then you should use H2, H3, etc. headings nested within your post (our post uses an H2 for the title “Steps to Clean Up Your WordPress Installation,” and then H3 headings for each numeric item). This improves readability and usability, keeping visitors from getting stuck in an unreadable wall of text. Paying close attention to basic formatting can make a big difference. This includes using headings, lists, quotes, buttons, links, and even different font styles to make the flow of your content more intuitive.
Keep an eye on relevance
When using images, videos, or other media in a blog post on your WordPress site, they should be relevant to the topic. Furthermore, you should not post media that is not relevant to the topic. Periodically updating old content and related media is also a good way to ensure that you do not have broken images or links.
Run updates regularly
Make sure your WordPress installation , themes, and plugins are up to date. If you haven’t updated in a while, do so. Using a current version of WordPress is essential to ensure that you receive the latest security patches for WordPress, as well as compatibility with plugins and themes for your site. Before updating, we always recommend that you back up your WordPress site. This is an important precaution in case one of your plugins breaks during an update, and you’ll have the ability to revert your site back to its previous state. To make the backup process easier, use one of the best WordPress backup services and plugins.
Monitor the speed of your website
If your site is taking too long to load, you need to figure out what might be stopping it from running smoothly . Pingdom Tools is a great way to check your WordPress site speed . Using a fast host is a good option to improve site speed, but some people also use shared hosting as it offers great value for money. But regardless, always make sure you are using a host that is appropriate for your web traffic – with shared hosting, you are actively sharing your server resources with as many other websites as you like , while with managed hosting, you are often only given a certain amount. Make sure you choose the right hosting plan for you . You should also pay attention to your theme and active plugins. Some WordPress add-ons (themes and plugins) are resource-hungry (for example, some of the big slider plugins), and poorly coded ones can definitely slow down your site. Test your site speed with theme demos before you download and install them, and research plugins before adding new ones.
Refresh your admin panel
Working on the frontend alone is not enough, it is like keeping your face clean while wearing clunky clothes - it is not a good sign. The backend or admin area of a WordPress site is just as important as its appearance. There is so much hidden backend work that can be optimized .
Remove themes that are no longer in use. A WordPress site comes with a lot of themes by default , but all of them are optional. In practice, you are not going to change themes that often. So, get rid of the old theme and move forward with less burden.
Delete delayed and spam comments. This creates a negative impression in terms of SEO . Use the Empty spam button to clear these comments with one click, and this regularly gives better results. You can also try the Antispam Bee plugin , which is specifically designed to save your legitimate comments and prevent spam .
Empty your trash bin often. The posts and pages of your WordPress site that you put in the trash will take up your space until you delete them permanently. WordPress has an option to permanently delete posts from the trash bin, so take advantage of it.
Work on broken links . Broken links create a very bad impression on visitors and search engines . The first step is to find such links and then fix them. Use plugins like W3C Link Checker to find broken links. After that, either update them manually or perform a 301 redirect (you should also check out our article on how to remove broken links , as well as our guide on updating permalinks).
Clean up your database. The database is an integral part, or rather the heart of your WordPress site, as it stores most of the necessary data. Therefore, it requires careful maintenance. This cleaning may include deleting temporarily used disk space, post revisions, spam comments and other items in the trash, as well as leftovers from plugins and themes. The free WP-Optimize plugin is a very useful plugin that will help you optimize your database in this way.
Disable unnecessary elements. This is also an easy way to trim useless elements present in any WordPress visual interface. Click on the Screen Options tab in the upper right corner of the WordPress dashboard. Here you can enable or disable various features by simply checking or unchecking the appropriate boxes.
Taxonomies should also be cleaned up. If you have any unused taxonomies on your site, get rid of them. If there are tags and categories that you don’t use, remove them manually. Since taxonomies exist for each type of post (which can include blog posts, portfolios , staff, testimonials , etc. depending on the theme and plugins you have active), you’ll need to go through each one to check for any unused items.
Unused media files should be removed. WordPress has a separate uploads folder where all media files uploaded to your site are placed. In the long run, this can add up to a lot of storage space, so it needs to be trimmed down. Plugins like Image Cleanup can find and remove such media files. You can also use the Force Regenerate Thumbnails plugin, which will remove any cropped images on your site left over from old themes and re-crop the images to fit your current theme, which can free up a lot of space if you’ve changed a lot of themes in the past.
Remove widgets you don’t use. This applies to both dashboard widgets and widgets that appear on your site’s homepage. For dashboard widgets (these appear on your homepage when you first log into WordPress), open the Screen Options tab at the top of the screen to turn available blocks on and off . Widgets on the front of your WordPress site in sidebars and footers can be found under Appearance > Widgets . To replace or rearrange them, simply drag and drop them.
