Website Cleanup — Technical Debt Resolution

Overview

A comprehensive backend cleanup of the Didion website was completed, resolving significant accumulated technical debt. The site had never had image alt text added, images had never been compressed, and hundreds of errors and thousands of warnings had gone unaddressed. Kinsta (the host) had been sending error notifications to the client, which created an opening for a hosting and maintenance proposal.

This cleanup serves as a concrete demonstration of the value Asymmetric provides through ^[1], and directly supports the case for Didion signing on for managed hosting.

Work Completed

Work was performed directly in the WordPress backend via CLI tooling. The crawl/health score dashboard had not yet updated at the time of the call, but the fixes were confirmed complete.

Context

• The client (Didion owner) had been receiving Kinsta error notifications for weeks prior to the cleanup
• No images in the media library had alt text — a significant SEO gap
• No images had been compressed — contributing to slow page load performance
• Melissa had sent a hosting proposal in July (prior year); the client asked for it to be resent

Outcome & Next Steps

• Melissa will resend the July hosting proposal, CC'ing Mark, and frame the cleanup work as evidence of the ongoing value of managed maintenance
• The email will highlight that monthly maintenance (error checks, image optimization, plugin updates, etc.) is included in the hosting arrangement
• Client will manually delete unneeded pages after the current project push is complete — Mark flagged not to delete pages prematurely during active work

Connection to Monthly Maintenance Standard

This cleanup is a one-time remediation of years of deferred maintenance. Going forward, Didion would be brought into the ^[2] cadence, which prevents this level of debt from accumulating. See ^[3] for an example of a client already on this standard.

Related

• ^[4]
• ^[5]
• ^[6]