When we open up a WordPress site that’s been running for years, we usually find the same things: dozens of plugins with a handful switched off, several themes nobody uses, administrator accounts for people who left long ago, and thousands of images in the media library. That’s what five to ten years of different people “just adding something” looks like.
If you’re planning a redesign, clean up first. You’ll move less across, decide faster, and avoid carrying old problems into a new site. There are two halves to it: the technical clutter, and the content.
Take a backup before you delete anything
Download a full backup (files and database) and store it somewhere other than the website’s own server. Some of what follows is permanent.
Part 1: The technical clutter
Work through these in the WordPress dashboard, in this order.
Plugins
Go to Plugins > Installed Plugins. For each one, ask: what does this do, and do we still need it?
- Deactivated plugins: delete them. Deactivated plugin files still sit on the server, and an outdated one with a known vulnerability can still be a way in.
- Plugins that haven’t been updated in over a year: click “View details”. If the developer has abandoned it, find a replacement or a way to live without it.
- Plugins doing the same job twice: two SEO plugins, two caching plugins, three slider plugins. Pick one.
- Plugins nobody can explain: deactivate one at a time and check the site. If nothing breaks after a week, delete it.
Themes
Go to Appearance > Themes. Keep the active theme, its parent theme if it’s a child theme, and one current default WordPress theme as a fallback. Delete the rest.
Users
Go to Users. Look for:
- Former staff, past developers and agencies you don’t work with any more. Delete their accounts and reassign their content to a current user when prompted.
- More than one or two administrators. Downgrade anyone who only edits content to Editor.
- Accounts with names like “admin” or “test”.
Old logins are one of the most common ways small business sites get compromised.
Media
Large unused images slow backups and migrations. Run an image optimisation plugin across the library first, then use a media cleaner to find unused files, checking its suggestions carefully because page builders sometimes hide image references from scanners.
Leftovers
Old forms that no longer go anywhere, test pages, draft posts from 2019, empty categories, and plugin tables left in the database after a plugin was deleted. Clear out the obvious ones. Database tidying beyond that is best left to whoever’s doing the rebuild.
Part 2: The content audit
This is the half that matters most and the half people skip.
Build the list
Open a spreadsheet. List every page and post on the site with its URL. Your sitemap (often /sitemap_index.xml or /wp-sitemap.xml) is the quickest way to get them all.
Add these columns:
| URL | Title | Clicks (last 12 months) | Last updated | Still accurate? | Decision |
|---|
Get the clicks from Google Search Console: open Performance, set the date range to 12 months, and look at the Pages tab. This tells you which pages people find through Google.
Decide: keep, merge, rewrite or delete
Go through each row and put one word in the Decision column.
Keep if the page gets search traffic or enquiries and is still accurate. These are your most valuable pages. They keep their URLs in the new site if at all possible.
Rewrite if the page gets traffic but the content is out of date, thin or off-brand. The topic has proven value. The words need work.
Merge if you’ve got several weak pages on the same subject. Three short posts on “how to choose a hot water system” from different years should become one good one. The old addresses get redirected to the new page.
Delete if the page gets no traffic, isn’t linked from anywhere important, and isn’t something a customer would miss. Old event announcements, “we’ve got a new website!” posts, staff profiles for people who left years ago.
When in doubt between delete and keep, look at whether it’s helping a customer make a decision. If not, let it go.
Fill the gaps
The audit usually shows what’s missing as clearly as what’s not working. Common gaps we find: no separate page for each main service, no page for the towns you serve, no clear pricing guidance, an About page that doesn’t mention who actually does the work. Note these as new pages for the redesign.
Before the redesign starts
When the audit’s done, you should have:
- A clean, backed-up site with only the plugins, themes and users you need.
- A spreadsheet listing every URL with a keep, rewrite, merge or delete decision.
- A list of new pages to write.
- A redirect list: every merged or deleted URL that had traffic, mapped to its new home. Our guide to 301 redirects explains why this protects your rankings, and mapping them is part of our SEO work on any rebuild.
Hand that to your designer and the project starts with answers instead of questions. If you’re still deciding whether you need a rebuild at all, redesign or refresh? will help.
A content audit is where we like to start a website redesign. Don’t fancy building the spreadsheet yourself? We can do it from your sitemap and Search Console data, starting with your site address.