Content. Privacy. Nosy Questions.

I routinely work on sites where there is lots of ‘stuff’ my clients aren’t even aware of. Maybe it was left from a previous employee. Maybe it was put there for some ‘temporary’ purpose and then forgotten about. Occasionally, it’s even junk deposited by some malware. So one of the first things I do when I start work on a site is take a mental inventory and if I see anything that looks unrelated to the site’s goal, I’ll ask you about it. Sometimes clients will feel like I’m asking some fairly ‘nosy questions’; almost an invasion of privacy. But that’s not the point at all. It’s good practice to periodically review the contents of every web site.

I just finished cleaning up a site where an old manager (no longer with the company) had their identity stolen. The bad people broke into the site using his old credentials. It took a long time to figure it out because he was not ‘the bad guy’ and nobody even remembered who he was so it was hard to make the connection between the credentials and the access.

To a large extent, web sites are these amazing storage lockers. And over time, no matter how hard you try to be neat, they get filled with at least some junk. Even the most highly controlled sites have ‘miscellaneous’ stuff that probably shouldn’t be there. And like public storage lockers, they should be disinfected every once in a while–even if it looks like no ones been inside. 😀

So if I ask you for some piece of information that seems ‘personal’, please understand, I have zero interest in your private business. Just the opposite in fact. My goal is to give you a clean site and knowing what belongs and what doesn’t is part of that process.