Understanding Annual Content Reviews

The initial milestone of the university-wide web content cleanup may be behind us, but the work of maintaining high-quality websites continues. What began as a campus-wide initiative is now an annual content review process that helps keep W&M websites accurate, useful and relevant.

If you've recently started receiving content review emails from Cascade, they're simply reminders that some of your assigned assets are approaching their next review date. Each email includes direct links to the assets that need your attention.

Note: Assets created between September 2025 and September 2026 were assigned a fixed review date in September 2026, regardless of the date they were created. Our apologies for any inconvenience caused by the shortened review periods for these assets. Assets in "news" folders have been set with extended review dates in spring 2027, and are not impacted by this issue. 

A content review is more than a quick proofread. Take time to evaluate each asset from your audience's perspective.

A good place to start is the Keep / Fix / Delete approach:

• Keep content that is accurate, current and valuable to your audiences.
• Fix content by updating outdated information, improving accessibility, repairing broken links and making other necessary revisions.
• Delete content that is outdated, duplicated or no longer serves a purpose. Before removing assets such as documents, images or widgets, use Relationships to confirm they aren't used elsewhere in Cascade.

After reviewing an asset and making any needed updates, remember to Mark as Reviewed in Cascade. This resets the asset's review date for another year and removes it from your list of upcoming reviews.

Helpful Resources

Need more information? Start with these resources:

• Our Content Review Guide walks through the annual review process, including the Keep / Fix / Delete approach and guidance for reviewing pages, documents, images and more.
• Annual content reviews are also a good opportunity to improve accessibility. Visit Accessibility Compliance for guidance on identifying and addressing common accessibility issues.
• Learn how content review works in Cascade, including review dates, marking assets as reviewed, dashboards and reports.
• Keep review reminders reaching the right people by understanding content ownership, including how ownership is assigned and updated.