Mac SEO Blog

For those of our users in the Northern Hemisphere, spring is on its way which usually means it is time to do some spring cleaning after winter and get in to shape for the summer. So, why not do a little bit of spring cleaning on your EverWeb website project file as well?

When you create your website you will undoubtedly modify some of your ideas along the way. You may even find that you need to make sweeping changes as some of your initial ideas just don’t translate as well as you thought they would when you actually come to build your website’s pages.

Building a website can lead to lots of abandoned, and modified, ideas. It can also bloat your website project file size if you do not do some maintenance on a regular basis. So, keeping cleaning up your project file’s assets is worth doing on a regular basis.

Why Project File Maintenance is Important

There are a few reasons why maintenance is important and good to do once in a while:

1. Smaller Project File, Faster Initial Loading. As project files grow, they will take more computer memory when loading so will tend to load slower over time as they get larger in size. Keeping your project file size down will help it load faster.
2. Smaller Project Files Make Editing Your Project Faster. With each version of EverWeb we optimize its code and find ways to make important tasks such as page editing, previewing, publishing and published page responsiveness even more better than before. The other way to keep EverWeb’s performance excellent is to keep your project file is ‘mean and lean’ with a well designed website that uses optimized assets.
3. Regular maintenance of your project file will also get rid of any clutter that you no longer need in your site. This makes it easier to organize and manage your assets.

The Clean Up!

1. Check for Unused Assets: The first part of cleaning things up is to check to see if you have any assets that you are not using and will not be wanting to use in the future. To find these assets, just go to the Assets tab and click on the Settings Cog. From the dropdown menu that appears, select ‘Find Unused Assets…’ If Assets are found, they are highlighted in the Assets List. You are also asked if you would like these Assets removed, which is an action that cannot be undone. If you have any doubts, click ‘No’. The unused assets will still be highlighted so you can manually decide which ones to keep or delete. Deleting assets you do not need will reduce the size of your project file.
2. Check the Size of Your Image Asset Files. Whilst on the Assets tab, click again on the Settings Cog. This time, select ‘Sort by File Size…’ This will sort the files in descending order of file size, so the largest file will be at the top of the list. Are there any files that are appear to be very large? As you probably know, if your page contains large image files, this will will drag on the loading speed of the page in a browser. Where you have large files, try reducing the dimensions of the image in an image editor (even Apple’s Preview will do) e.g. some stock images can be 5000 pixels wide when you typically only need image widths of about 1920 wide or less in your site. Furthermore, you can reduce the resolution of the image e.g. the image may be 600dpi when in a browser you may be able to use an image of 72-170 dpi without any noticeable loss in image quality. Once you have reduced the size of the image, you can use EverWeb’s Replace Asset feature to substitute the smaller image file for the larger.
3. Manage Your Cache Files: Typically you will not usually need to manage your cache files, but if you are a bit low on hard disk space, you may find this useful to check, especially if you have a large project file. Go to the EverWeb-> Preferences-> Backup tab. Click on the ‘Manage Cache Files…’ button. You can choose to clear the EverWeb’s Preview and Publishing caches. Note that these files will be regenerated the next time you preview or publish your site. The last option is where you can clear your Backup files if you no longer need them. Remember, however, that if you delete the backup files they be moved to your computer’s Trash can from where they will be deleted according to your computer’s emptying trashcan schedule.

Remember: Keep Your Site Up To Date

Spring cleaning your site every once in a while is a good thing to do to keep everything working properly. If you have replaced some files to reduce the size of your project file and to help with page loading times, you may want to publish the full site using the File-> Publish Entire Site menu option. This can be especially useful if you have updated your version of EverWeb as your whole site will benefit from the new version’s optimizations!

And don’t forget, whilst doing maintenance on your site, check for things that may be out of date or need updating in your content. For example, if you have copyright notices on your pages, remember to update the year every year to keep up to date. If you’re site has news, now is a good time to update your home page and share the news! or is it time to update your blog with a new post. And don’t forget to give your SEO a freshen up too! In a changing world you need to keep your site fully optimized at all times!

Remember: Keeping your site fresh is the best thing you can do to keep your visitors coming back!

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