Website Maintenance – Deleting Junk Files
If you’ve had your website for a while you probably see how easy it is for files and content to become dated and stack up. This is especially true if you’re a blogger. You probably have tons of pics that were uploaded to your media files, but were never used. I would also guess that you have posts that you started, but never published or plugins that you use to use, but no longer have a need for. Stay tuned and read on because I am going to tell you exactly how and why you want to delete those junk files.
Keeping around those old files what we call website clutter my friend. Overtime when you make changes to your website, old data is left behind and not to mention all of the spam comments that are never deleted or just sitting in the trash folder. All of these things create unnecessary clutter can take up valuable space.
And when enough junk is accumulated, it could slow your website down as well as crash it completely. Now let’s put this all into perspective on why it matters and to blow your mind a little bit. Just because you may not need those files and can probably care less, your website uses each and every file EVERY SINGLE TIME a user visits your website. It doesn’t matter if the file is old or new, every file gets loaded and is communicated in the database and every communication between your website and the database counts and is what could cause a slow loading website.
To help keep your website’s database clean, you’ll want to be sure to optimize your database. There is more to deleting the junk than just throwing it in the trash. These files MUST be deleted from the database itself.
The easy way is to install a caching plugin like WP Fastest Cache, WP Sweep, or WP Optimize. Some of these will require upgrading to the premium versions. The next way is to get into the c-panel of your website via myphpadmin to clean up the files. I will tell you the this way can be a little overwhelming if you’re not used to it. I do recommend that if you’re going to go into the c-panel of your website or even using a plugin to clean up the database, be sure that you always back-up your website before you make any changes. This way if something were to happen, you are safe! Of course as always, I am here. If this is something that you feel like you want to hire someone to do for you, contact me and let’s discuss a maintenance plan option for your website.
I’ll see you next Wednesday!
-LaShonda
