We’ve spent some time recently cleaning up. This may not seem like fun to most people, but I actually enjoy it.
We are frequently updating our sites with new designs, technologies, and features, but we often neglect to decommission or delete our old stuff. Sometimes we don’t want to get rid of things because we want to be able to roll back in case of problems, or we think that the old information may have some value at a later date.
Storage is cheap these days, so it may seem like a waste of time to look backwards and clean up your mess. While I certainly don’t want to spend a majority of my time cleaning up, I think it is an important thing to do.
Here are some things to consider:
- Will your old data cause confusion and delay when you or someone else needs to work on your current system?
- Are you paying to backup old data?
- Could your old system cause a security problem down the road?
I’ve started creating calendar reminders to delete data and decommission systems when I feel that it will be safe. We also have some processes in place that clean up our old log files automatically.
Are you being proactive and cleaning up, or do you wait until your disk is full?
February 9th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
Wayne,
This is a great topic. As an overly analytical and OCD person, I definitely struggle with wanting things to be very organized and structured. The balance is keeping old apps, scripts and dbs you used in the past and may use again while also wanting to keep things clean.
How often do you guys archive content and what’s your process? Do you pull things offline and store locally or keep older items on the site and just remove links to them?
February 12th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
We move old webapps to a directory on the server that isn’t accessible through the web. At that point we decide how long to keep the files on the server (typically 30-60 days). After that, we move them to an external drive or delete them.
We do not yet have a good process for removing old content. We thought about creating some type of script that would compare Apache/IIS access logs to the file system and report unused or infrequently used content.