Every demo import leaves a residue. Sliders you never used, portfolio items with placeholder text, widgets in sidebars nobody checks, and — the expensive one — theme modules still loading assets on every page. On recent audits we reclaimed between 200 and 500 KB of per-page weight from cleanup alone. Here is the order that avoids breaking things.
Step 1: Inventory what is actually loading
Before deleting anything, open your homepage in DevTools and note every theme-prefixed CSS/JS file. Then check the theme’s module/feature panel and list what is enabled. The overlap of “loading” minus “used” is your target list.
Step 2: Disable modules first, delete nothing yet
Turn off unused modules (sliders, portfolio, social feeds, newsletter integrations) in the theme panel. Browse the whole site — including pages you rarely visit — confirming nothing breaks. Only when a module has been off for a week without complaints should you look at deleting its data.
Step 3: Hunt orphan demo content
Demo imports create posts, pages, and attachments your content never references:
- Media library items not attached to any content — query by “unattached” and review before bulk-deleting.
- Demo posts with “Lorem” or theme-name slugs still published or trashed.
- Slider datasets, portfolio entries, and testimonial sets from the demo.
Empty your trash too — trashed demo attachments still sit in the uploads folder.
Step 4: Widget areas and leftover shortcodes
Check every widget area for demo widgets; then search your content for shortcodes belonging to removed plugins (search the database for [theme_name_ patterns). Orphan shortcodes render as plain text — embarrassing and easy to miss.
Step 5: Re-measure, then cache
Run your baseline measurements again. Cleanup typically saves 0.2–0.5s uncached LCP. Then make sure the caching layer is doing its job — the caching guide covers the setup — because cleanup gains multiply there.
The one rule
Delete data only after disabling and observing for a week. Cleanup is cheap; restoring deleted demo configurations you actually wanted is not. If you would rather have someone else read the module list, the free audit flags loaded-but-unused assets automatically.
In our audits, 200–500 KB of per-page weight and 0.2–0.5s of uncached LCP, depending on how heavy the theme's demo was. Usually, but check first: page builders and sliders sometimes reference media without a formal attachment relationship. Export a list and search content before bulk-deleting. Delete published demo pages — drafts still invite confusion and accidental publishing. Redirect any demo URLs that may have been indexed. Rarely, if they were truly unused. That is why the sequence matters: disable, browse the whole site for a week, then delete data.How much speed does removing demo data actually gain?
Is it safe to delete unattached media?
Should I remove demo pages or set them to draft?
Can disabling theme modules break my site?
