Last week I did a spring clean of my office (although it is Summer here). It’s amazing how many bits and pieces one can accumulate over time and how they pile up to become an accumulative mess.
Blogs can also become messy over time in a similar way. Most obviously this happens when bloggers keep adding new features, buttons and widgets to their sidebars (I was on one blog yesterday that had more buttons than it had content). But the accumulation of mess can easily happen behind the scenes in the code of your blog also.
Rachel has just posted a Blog cleanup checklist that might be helpful in getting the code of your blog cleaned up. To be honest it’s something I constantly have struggled with as I’m not really wired in a technical way – but it is important every now and again to dig into.
The only thing I’d add to Rachel’s list is a section on cleaning up the front end of your blog. Perhaps something like:
11. Take a critical look at the information in your menus and sidebars. What is essential and what is just clutter?
and/or
12. Delete 50% (minimum) of the buttons in your side bar.
