Sites drift out of date quietly — a few years of small additions, no full pass over the whole thing. One generation brings the page back to a single current standard.
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Updating a site that nobody has looked at in a while
Websites rarely go out of date deliberately. They get a new section for a launch, a banner for a campaign, a page for a partner — each built to whatever the standard was that month — and after a few years the site is a record of its own edit history.
Accretion is the real problem
The individual additions are usually fine. What's wrong is that there's no longer one standard: three heading styles, two card treatments, a section that's still using the old spacing.
An update is worth more than the sum of its fixes precisely because it re-imposes a single system. This is also why patching individual sections tends to disappoint — you fix the worst one and the inconsistency simply moves.
What "current" means concretely
Fluid responsive layout rather than desktop-plus-breakpoints. A readable type scale with real hierarchy. Consistent spacing from a defined scale rather than ad-hoc pixel values. Components with proper hover and focus states. Images that don't force horizontal scrolling on a phone.
These are checkable rather than matters of taste, which is what makes them automatable.
Update per template, not per page
Most sites have a handful of real templates — a homepage, a product or service page, an article, a contact page — repeated with different content.
Updating one page per template gives you a system you can then apply, rather than a per-page effort that stalls halfway through.
Common questions
How often should a site be updated?
There's no fixed interval, but the useful signal is inconsistency: when new sections stop matching old ones, the site has drifted enough to be worth a pass.
Do I have to update everything at once?
No. Working template by template, starting with the pages that get traffic, is both lower risk and easier to stop partway through if the results aren't what you wanted.
Will the update change my content?
Your copy and images carry over from the source page. What changes is the layout and styling around them.
Can I see it before it goes live?
Yes — you review the generated page and export it only when you're happy. Nothing is published to your site by this tool.
Pick the page you'd be least comfortable showing a new customer and start there.