I just spent most of my weekend working in the yard… removing dead crap that the Florida cold killed and making way for new spring growth. Yes, it is that time of year. Spring!

But, I’m not just talking about the weather and our yards. 😇 Because, it is a good time to do the same with other things, too. Including our websites.

And, I am. You’ll notice several changes to the BMA site that I made last week. And if you wanna know how crazy I can get, I’m gearing up to gut my home office and re-do some of that, too.

Its a curse. I love remodeling stuff. 🤣

But, on that note, I want to talk about doing a “spring cleaning” on your website. Because, if your site is anything like mine, there’s “stuff” that can be removed, re-tested, re-aligned and fixed.

I also want to share 10 easy-peasy ways that you can use AI tools to save gobs of time when working on your content.

Alright, let’s go…

Give Your Website A Spring Cleaning

There is something useful about looking at your website with fresh eyes.

This is something I’m in the middle of right now – with the Blog Marketing Academy. Last week, I made some changes to the website…. including removal of FluentCommunity as my “Client Center”, separating the ONEPass content out on it’s own, and some other things. This is all part of an audit I’m doing on my website.

Here’s the thing…

Over time, websites collect baggage. A form gets added for one campaign and never gets revisited. A plugin gets installed for one small feature and stays forever. A page gets published based on an old offer, an old assumption, or an old strategy. Little by little, the site stops being a clean, intentional business asset and starts becoming a storage closet of old decisions.

That is why a website spring cleaning is so valuable. And ‘Tis the season. 😎

This is not just about deleting clutter. It is about stepping back and asking whether the site is still doing the job you need it to do now. The business changes. Sometimes you just change you mind. Your offers evolve. Your audience shifts. Your priorities become clearer. But often, the website stays frozen in older versions of those decisions.

A good spring cleaning starts with the basics. Go through the site as if you were a visitor who has never seen it before. Look at your homepage. Is the message clear? Is it obvious who the site is for and what the next step should be? Are the calls to action aligned with what you actually want people to do today? Are the things you’ve built actually being used?

It is OK to turn something off and trash it if it isn’t serving a real purpose. This is why I removed FluentCommunity. Don’t get me wrong…. I LOVE that plugin for what it does. But, for ME and my business, my initial thoughts of having a small community for clients wasn’t proving to be worth it at all. And trying to jam client functionality into the template of FluentCommunity was more trouble than it was worth. So, I changed my mind. And reversed all of it.

You also really need to check your site’s user experience. Pull the site up on your phone and really use it. Not just a quick glance… actually click around. Are buttons easy to tap? Do layouts break? Does anything feel awkward, cramped, or annoying? Mobile issues are easy to miss when you spend most of your time working from a desktop, but for many visitors, mobile is the first impression.

Then move into your funnel. Test your opt-in forms. Fill them out yourself. See what happens next. Does the thank you page make sense? Are the emails still relevant? Do they arrive properly? Do they reflect your current positioning and offers? A lot of site owners assume these things are working because they were set up once. But assumption is not the same thing as verification.

It is also worth reviewing the hidden layers of the site. Are there plugins installed that are no longer necessary? Are there pages in your menu that no longer serve a real purpose? Are there old experiments, old landing pages, or old bits of copy that no longer reflect the direction of the business? Sometimes the most useful improvements come not from adding something new, but from removing what is no longer helping.

This kind of review can also uncover strategic drift. Maybe your site is still pushing an offer that is no longer your main focus. Maybe the lead magnet no longer attracts the right kind of subscriber. Maybe the structure of the site made sense a year ago, but not anymore. A website should support your intentions, not just preserve your history.

That is really the heart of spring cleaning your website… bringing the site back into alignment. Making sure the words, pages, forms, offers, and user experience all support the business you are trying to run right now.

Most of the time, the biggest gains do not come from a redesign. They come from paying attention again.

Because often, what hurts a website is not some huge technical issue. It is neglect. A hundred small things left unquestioned for too long.

So, this season, it may be worth opening the closet, pulling everything out, and taking a hard look.

Not just to clean it up… but to make sure your site is still working for you.

Is Your Site Still Doing Its Job?

A lot of website owners assume things are working because nothing appears broken. But, in many cases, the real problem is not a site that is down… it is a site that has slowly drifted out of alignment.

Old plugins. Outdated pages. Forms that have not been tested in months. Offers and calls to action that no longer match the business. These things add up.

I can help you get this stuff all lined up on your own website. I know how it goes… because I have to do it myself, too. 😇

Through my strategy and technical services, I can help you look at YOUR site with fresh eyes, identify what is not serving a purpose anymore, and tighten things up so the site is supporting your business the way it should. That might mean improving the user experience, cleaning up the funnel, simplifying the tech stack, or fixing the little issues that quietly chip away at results.

Sometimes you do not need a redesign. You just need clarity, cleanup, and a smarter setup.

If your site could use a spring cleaning, let’s talk.

WordPress News & Updates

• Divi 5 Is Now Official. Nearly 4 years after it was announced that Elegant Themes was working in Divi 5, it is only now being officially launched. It is a total re-write from the previous version. Works completely differently now…. which is great because I thought Divi 4 sucked (but maybe its just me). The new Divi looks pretty slick, actually. I’ll get around to testing it out personally.
• SureCart Gets Product Reviews. SureCart has been updated to now support product reviews. This is something WooCommerce has been able to do for a long time, so good to see one of the leading Woo alternatives now able to do the same.
• Builderius Sense. I’ve been seeing rumblings of Builderius, a page builder for WordPress that is aimed at professionals. Now, it has Builderius Sense AI as well as a new hookup to Claude AI. This would give Claude access to your current template, elements, project structure and Builderius itself…. and enable it to build things on your site. Quite interesting.
• FluentCart 1.3.14. FluentCart got an update last week. It now supports bulk product imports, early installment payment payoff, new Gutenberg blocks, and ability to add images by URL. Full release notes can be found here.
• FluentCRM 3.0 Beta. The next major release of FluentCRM – version 3.0 – has entered public beta. Big highlights include SMS marketing (powered by Twilio), FluentCart abandoned cart, a re-designed interface, a new email builder (Gutenberg native), and numerous performance upgrades. See all the details here. I will be testing it out shortly.
• WordPress Featured Plugins Tab Gets An Upgrade. ​For awhile now, when you went to add a new plugin in WordPress, the Featured tab looked all but static. Nothing ever changed. Well, now The Repository is reporting how that is now a thing of the past since the Featured tab is now working to surface hidden gems and they will rotate every 2 weeks.
• SEOPress 9.6. SEOPress has been updated to version 9.6, which now supports the ability to freeze the post modification date. You can also now automatically import settings from SmartCrawl, which switching over. Check it out.
• Clippy For WordPress? Nick Hamze has created Clippy for WordPress. Remember the little paperclip dude in old versions of Microsoft Word? Yeah…. that clippy. 🤣 You can see his post on X – which has a link to a playground site where you can see it in action. Not sure the world really needs this, but hey… its all in good fun.
• The Next “Sure” Product – SureCookie. The waitlist is now open for SureCookie, the next plugin in the “Sure” line of products. As you mighta guessed by the name, this is a cookie compliance plugin. I can’t help but wonder why they think they need to create yet another one of these but…. OK.

10 Time-Saving Ways To Use AI On Your Website

AI is at its best when it saves you time on the parts of website management that tend to be repetitive, slow, or mentally expensive.

I do not think AI should be trusted blindly. It still needs oversight. It still needs your judgment. But, when used properly, it can dramatically speed up content creation, asset production, and general website upkeep.

In other words, AI is not the strategist… but it can be a very useful assistant. 😎

Here are 10 ways you can use tools like ChatGPT (or really any that you prefer) to speed up your workflow. Many of these I do myself…

1. Draft blog post feature images

One of the easiest wins is using AI image tools to create feature images for blog posts, newsletter issues, and landing pages. Instead of hunting around for stock photography that only kind of fits, you can generate something more custom and more on-brand. This is especially useful when you want a conceptual or abstract visual rather than a literal photo.

Image generation used to suck with AI, but it has improved substantially. I personally have the best luck using Gemini (which uses Nano Banana) and Grok.

2. Create lead magnets faster

Need a checklist, guide, worksheet, cheat sheet, or email mini-course? AI can help you go from rough idea to working draft much faster. You still want to shape the final version so it matches your voice and your strategy, but AI can save a lot of time on outlining, structuring, and early drafting.

Using Gemini Canvas to create a quick draft works nicely. Then, you modify right then and there (since you shouldn’t be using AI to literally write everything). Export to Docs.

3. Refresh older content

Older blog posts often have good bones, but may need updating. AI can help you review an article and look for weak sections, outdated references, missing examples, or opportunities to improve the call to action. It can also help you tighten wording, improve formatting, and modernize the structure without having to rewrite everything from scratch.

You can literally feed it the URL to a blog post you want to modernize and it will read the article and you take it from there.

4. Outline articles before you write them

A lot of content creation friction comes from not knowing where to start. AI is useful for generating possible headlines, article outlines, section ideas, and talking points. Even if you do not use its first draft, it can help you get past the blank page faster and move into actual writing.

5. Use AI writing spaces to speed up long-form drafting

Tools like Gemini Canvas can be useful for drafting and refining longer articles in a more flexible writing environment. For instance, you could draft an article there, export it to Google Docs, then move it into WordPress using something like Wordable. That creates a smoother path from idea to published content, especially if you prefer writing outside the WordPress editor.

6. Generate homepage or landing page visuals

AI is not only for blog graphics. It can also help create homepage photos, section backgrounds, hero visuals, or illustrations for opt-in pages and sales pages. This can be helpful when you need custom-looking imagery but do not want to spend time searching stock sites or hiring out every visual.

As an example, I just re-did my own homepage hero image. Before, it was a photo of me looking off to the side and, frankly, it didn’t make sense in that position. Go, I used Gemini to create a new one. My prompt was as simple as it gets:
“I would like a concept image suitable for the hero bar on a homepage. With the main content of the image to the right. The concept is “From the Tech to the Strategy… WordPress For Business Simplified.” I would like something that signifies WordPress, but used to make money. The target audience is solopreneurs.”

It came up with a good one. It had a woman in it, so I told it to remove the person since this is a concept image only. I also told it the dimensions I was after. Done.

7. Brainstorm and improve website copy

AI can be very handy for drafting headline options, subheads, button text, offers, benefit bullets, and calls to action. It is especially useful when you already know what you want to say, but need help finding cleaner, sharper wording. Think of it as a way to generate options faster, not as something to hand the keys over to.

8. Turn rough ideas into usable assets

Many useful website assets start as a half-formed thought. Maybe you have an idea for a download, a resource page, a nurture email, or a short workshop. AI can help take that raw idea and shape it into something more concrete… title, outline, sections, promotional copy, and supporting content.

9. Repurpose content into multiple formats

One blog post can become a lot more than one blog post. AI can help turn an article or transcript into social posts, email copy, excerpts, FAQs, lead magnet ideas, lesson summaries, or landing page copy. This is one of the most practical ways to get more value out of content you have already created.

10. Speed up small writing tasks across the site

Website management is filled with small writing jobs that are easy to underestimate. Meta descriptions. Excerpts. Alt text starters. email sequences. Confirmation messages. Tool descriptions. Product blurbs. Support documentation. AI can help you get those drafted much faster so those tasks stop clogging up your workflow.

The main benefit here is not that AI magically runs your website for you.

It is that AI reduces the time spent on first drafts, repetitive production work, and low-leverage busywork. That gives you more time to think strategically, improve the site, and focus on the parts of the business that actually need your judgment.

Used that way, AI becomes less of a gimmick… and more of a practical tool in the toolbox.