Hey, it's me again (© Cheap Trick, 1979), here to present the top best greatest cleaning tips for your websites!
I normally do a numbered list, but this time, I didn't feel like it. So in no particular order, here are the top tips for cleaning your website.
Get rid of Nivo Slider
According to my best friends (not me hoping they were my friends) at Nielsen Norman Group, people frequently overlook carousels on websites.
"If you are using a carousel in the hope that people will see a variety of content, know that some people will only see the first frame or none at all." - my BFF, Kara Pernice
As part of your spring cleaning, you should move away from carrousels, and start using an hero image instead.
Get rid of sidebars
Information overload is a real problem, especially on content pages. One good way to cut down on your saturated pixels intake is to remove sidebars.
You have many options to declutter your page: footer content, related posts under articles, mid-page call to action, etc. Moreover, removing the sidebar will guarantee that the order in which your content appears is respected on mobile devices.
If you do decide to keep your sidebars, feature only relevant content, and make sure that your content is purely functional and doesn't look like an ad.
Delete old pages
If you're like me, you like keeping old stuff "just in case". And then that "just in case" never happens. Deleting old pages from your website is important for many reasons, but mainly for SEO and making sure that you don't add layers of dust over your website. I am allergic to web dust and so are many people. True story.
A cool trick if you don't know where to start: /sitemap.xml. All WMS websites have that. Open your favorite web browser, type https://www.mcgill.ca/[insert_site_name_here]/sitemap.xml, and you should see the list of all public pages on your site with the last modification date. Isn't this wonderful?
Clean out broken images and links
Did you check out the lights on your website's dashboard? That's what I thought.
Depending on the age, websites should be serviced every 10,000 miles or 6 to 12 months. You can verify your web vitals at https://www.mcgill.ca/[insert_site_name_here]/admin/dashboard. Make sure you check the "URL Duplicates", "Broken links", and "Placeholder words scan" reports.
Sunset old sites
Sometimes, after years of fighting orcs and hackers, it's time for a website to sail to Valinor.
If a project is no longer active, sunsetting the old website will make sure that no outdated information lives on mcgill.ca.
For that, submit a request through the IT Support site, and we will send flowers and a sympathy card.