Keeping Content Fresh: Housekeeping and Stale Articles

Documentation goes out of date as your product changes. HelpGuides helps you keep it current: you can give any article a review date, and the Housekeeping page lists the articles that are due for review alongside the URLs readers can't find.

The Housekeeping page

Click Housekeeping in the left navigation. The page is titled Manage Content and has three parts: a table of your articles, the Articles Flagged as Stale card and the Not Found (404) card.

The Manage Content page listing articles with status and dates — The Housekeeping page

The article table

The table lists articles with their Title (and URL path), Status, Created date and Updated date. It's sorted by Updated, newest first, so the articles nobody has touched in a long time are easy to find: click the Updated column heading to sort oldest first.

Type in Search ... to find articles by title.
Use Filter to show only Published, Unlisted, Draft, Scheduled or Deleted articles.
Click any column heading to sort by it, and use Prev and Next to page through the list 10 articles at a time.
Click an article's title to open it in the editor.

The table remembers your sort order, search and filter the next time you visit.

Articles Flagged as Stale

This card lists up to 10 published articles whose stale date has passed, with the Title and Stale Date of each. Click a title to open the article. When nothing is due, the card shows No Stale Articles.

Not Found (404)

This card lists the top 10 URLs on your site that readers requested but that don't exist, with the number of Requests for each. It only appears when there's at least one. Click a path to see its details and add a redirect, or click the Not Found (404) heading to open the full report. See Redirects and Page Not Found Reports.

Flag an article for review

Give an article a stale date when you know it will need checking, for example after a planned product release or when a price or policy is due to change.

Open the article in the editor.
Click Advanced at the top of the editor to open Advanced Article Options.
Open the Advanced tab.
In Date Stale, pick the date the article should be reviewed. It must be today or later.
Optionally, add Status Notes explaining what needs checking, for example "Update screenshots after the March release".
Click Save Options.

Advanced tab with Date Stale and Status Notes — Setting a stale date

When the date arrives, the article appears in Articles Flagged as Stale, and the editor shows Article is stale as of followed by the date whenever someone opens it. The article stays published and nothing changes for readers.

After you've reviewed and updated the article, set a new Date Stale for the next review, or clear it, and click Save Options.

Tip

Use Status Notes as instructions for whoever picks up the review, including an AI assistant. The notes are returned alongside each stale article.

Find stale articles with an AI assistant

If you've connected an AI assistant through Model Context Protocol, its get_stale_articles tool lists articles whose stale date is today or earlier, with their status and status notes. See Model Context Protocol Endpoints.

A simple routine

Once a week, open Housekeeping and work through Articles Flagged as Stale.
Check the Not Found (404) card and add redirects for URLs that readers keep requesting.
Once a month, sort the table by Updated, oldest first, and review anything that hasn't changed in a long time.
On the Dashboard, check Least Viewed Articles and Search None Helpful for content that needs improving or is missing.
Run a link audit from the SEO page to catch broken links. See Finding Broken Links with the SEO Report.