Stale Content Audit Plugin

The Stale Content Audit plugin is a custom tool that scans the site for pages and posts with content that hasn’t been updated in 6 months, and is considered “stale”. Site users will receive an emailed report from the plugin periodically that catalogs the content which needs to be updated or generally addressed across all of the sites they currently or previously had access to edit. That email includes basic data about what the audit generated for them, a CSV file for that data, and a link to an page in WordPress where they can view and interact with the data. Site Administrators will receive an additional CSV file with the data for all stale content across the site. If a user is the Lead Site Administrator, they receive an additional report of all stale pages for all users across that site. For the purposes of the audit, users which last edited a page or post will receive “ownership” of that page/post until it’s updated by another site user.

Viewing the stale content audit through the dashboard

A listing of stale pages or posts can be reviewed through the plugin’s interface. To view this interface:

  • Go to the Dashboard menu
  • Select “Stale Content Audit Report”
  • In the drop-down menu at the top of the page, choose the name of the site you would like to view the information for.*

*If a user is the lead administrator of a site, a red Admin tag appears next to the site name in the drop-down.

The pages table for every user includes three actions per page:

  • Delete the page – moving it to the WordPress trash
  • Hide the page from future audits
  • Edit the page.

The data can be exported as a CSV file, if needed.

Viewing the stale content audit as a Lead Administrator

When a site is chosen, two tables will appear: one for all stale pages for that particular site, and another of all users with stale pages for that site. Pages that are “hidden” are viewable by the lead admin. A hidden page is whitelisted from all future audits unless the author for that page changes.