Hi all, new HubSpot CMS dev here. I am stepping into a project with an existing 3-year old site. There is no real development process or organizational guidelines to speak of, they just create new pages and themes as needed when leadership requests.
As a result, there are a number of pages that have not been updated in years and that use a very outdated theme. These pages are still published and publically accessible, albeit with URLs that are mostly not linked anywhere. These website pages clog the content system and risk having users come across rudimentary themes with page content that does not reflect the org’s current branding, nor actual offerings.
I would like to create a dashboard with reports on these website pages that could highlight published pages created over X years ago using an outdated theme, with Y number of recent page views, and ideally some additional optimization-related information. It would be helpful to show leadership that there is a need to have these pages archived or updated. I have come across some of this data but largely have not been able to figure this out. Could someone point me in the right direction please?
@bearons it’s going to be really tough to get a report together natively in HubSpot, it would be better to compile the information you need in an external spreadsheet.
The biggest blocker is going to be what theme was used - this can’t be accessed in any of the analytics reporting.
You can add “theme” to your content views so it would be easier to capture that data:
You could export the analytics data and then add the theme info.
I recommend having these data points for every page:
Created Date
Publish Date
Updated Date
Publish Status
Page Name
Page URL
Theme Used
Language (if applicable)
Domain (if multiple)
Last Date Page Seen
Page Views Last 30 Days
Page Views Last 365 Days
Internal Links (if any)
Backlinks (if any)
I know this isn’t the news you wanted to hear, hope it helps you find more of the data you’re looking for!
Hi @Jnix284 , thanks for your reply. I think that your approach will suffice for my purposes, however I am facing one major issue with your suggestion - the “Page Views Last _ Days” are not available for me when editing the columns to display.
So, two questions:
- Does this have to do with what level account access I have been given by the organization?
- Is there any other method of exporting Page Views per website data? I’ve come across templates on this in the Dashboards feature but have not seen where to access this raw data.
Regards,
Ben
you’re welcome @bearons, happy it was helpful.
To answer your questions:
1. no, it’s not an actual column or property unfortunately. Depending on page volume, you might not want this for every page, but I would add it manually for the pages you are recommending get unpublished/archived - you’d have to look at the data manually to find it and it might not add a lot of value, but if those pages haven’t been seen in over a year it would drive your point home.
2. There is an analytics API (legacy docs) and new beta doc if you want to fetch your data that way. Within HubSpot, I use the Analytics export for Sessions (all time) because it will give me all of the pages (published/unpublished) with all the data to use as a starting point to modify from (this is the report that doesn’t include “theme” which has to be manually added).
Let me know if there’s anything else I can help with!
Thanks again @Jnix284 , this is definitely setting me in the right direction and your clarifications were helpful.
My account seems to be limited to viewing Sessions (all time) only for UTM Parameters, which doesn’t give me as granular a view as I am hoping for. It does get me close, however, so I will look at this a little closer. I will return here when I’m able to get that sorted.
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While we are discussing this topic @Jnix284 , could you recommend me any resources or best practices for cleaning up bloated CMS environments? I obviously want to be mindful of old-but-active pages but without any system in place it seems like content ecosystems will end up with four pages titled “Home”, “Home v2”, “[NEW] Home”, “Home - 06-08-2023”. (lol)
How can I go about cleaning this up methodically?
-Ben
@bearons try changing from Sessions to Pages, that should give you what you need.
Personally I think manual cleanup of the front-end assets should happen first, once you have everything cleared out that you don’t need - and I mean “delete” not “archive” to really clear the clutter, only keeping top performing content that you want to update and republish later.
Once you do that, you can view dependents on the backend for the coded files to start cleaning house there.
If all of the themes are local (not marketplace) you can pull a copy of everything via the CLI so if you need to restore anything you delete you have a backup.
Otherwise, I would delete as much easy, low hanging fruit (outdated/unused) first. Once that’s done, create a project list (or spreadsheet) to track the assets that need migrating.
I wish there was a better way, but rolling up your sleeves and digging in is the best way to get your bearings.
Once you have it clean, document the heck out of everything so this doesn’t happen again.
Unfortunately, it appears that I only have “Pages per Session”, no overall “Pages” option. I’ll get to the bottom of this once the account admin gets back in office. And thank you for the run down on your best approach towards cleaning this up, Jennifer.
When you refer to assets, do you mean Website and Landing Pages specifically or individual modules and sections in the Design Manager? I’ll need to be mindful of deleting without express client permission, hence “archive” (if that feature even exists).
Spreadsheet does appear to be the best approach, though, and is my current plan + documentation. Nothing wrong with rolling up the sleeves and getting to work!! Thanks for all your help @Jnix284
@bearons from the traffic analytics, can you try clicking here on Pages:
For the front-end, assets would be the website or landing pages. All of the modules and sections would be on the back-end in Design Manager.
I completely understand a lot of clients are hesitant to delete, it’s still worth making a solid case for a thorough cleanup to make sure everything is aligned moving forward - deleting coded files won’t break the analytics for those pages you have archived (the analytics are retained if you archive vs delete), but I would still delete pages that are completely worthless (like those called “home (clone)(clone)(clone)” that were never published).
You’re welcome - if there’s anything further I can do to help, feel free to tag me in your questions here in the community 
