Keeping content current could be crucial

Gadgetopia had a post recently that looked at the concept of keeping content up-to-date. When you place content into your content management system, the CMS should always attach a date to it. That doesn't mean it always displays the date, as we learned in the recent UA stock debacle story [1], but date stamping is a standard CMS functionality. Once a date is attached to a piece of content, it seems a simple enough matter to come up with a set of policies you can build into your workflow engine to look for content that is over a certain number of days/months/years old. You can then funnel that content to a human editor who can decide if the content should be expired or not.

Some content such as your "About" page may be very old, but if the information is current, there is no need to arbitrarily expire it. However, if a potential customer or client comes to your site looking for information and finds outdated material that clearly shows you haven't been paying attention to the website, it's possible that you could turn off someone who is interested in your company. It makes sense to look at your content periodically and make sure that it's current and still applicable to your business. If it's not, delete it, or update it as needed.

You can use the CMS to help you. Some such as Ektron [2] (as the Gagetopia piece points out) have a content expiration date feature that enables you to set a use-by date for content. It's a nice idea, and for some sites where the content has grown stale because of neglect, it would be helpful to stimulate some action and attention for the site. Keep in mind that this same concept applies to content inside the organization; it's more likely that content will become dated over time. Just as you used to archive old paper files, you should apply a similar philosophy to content in your CMS, archiving content that is no longer current.

For more:
- read the Gadgetopia article [3]