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.
About Darren Rowse
My name is Darren Rowse and I’m a full time Blogger making a living from blogs like 
Yep…i already did this a few day ago. Switched to a new design and a clutterfree frontpage. The most important and most prominent item on your homepage is the content. Not polls, buttons, recent comments etc….
I think many users are overwhelmed with the amount of information provided on many frontpages. I moved recent comments, polls, archives and favorite articles to a separate page. Regular readers with real interest in those information will still be able to get them.
Hey Darren,
Since you’re spring cleaning, maybe you would like to fix the code that overruns your post body.
I noticed it after you put the Six Figure Blogging button in the sidebar.
Only a suggestion from an amature.
Joe
Darren
It’s very easy to get carried away with plugins, widgets and the like. I removed all the silly “subscribe” buttons a few months ago and gained a lot of screen real estate. Upgrading to the latest version of WordPress made me reassess which plugins I was actively using and which ones were just geeky clutter!
Michele
I just accidentally deleted all my plugins and that seems to have fixed my problem. LOL
Aaron – a bit extreme :)
Do ya think? :)
I’m sure it’s a _lot_ cleaner as a result :)
yup, those are awesome tips indeed. always need to clean up junk :D
I’ve done this recently, although instead of removing the “subscribe with..” buttons, I converted them to text links.