Reducing storage fees in Arc XP
As someone who manages editorial operations, you might also have visibility into what your organization pays to use Arc XP. One area where you can save money is storage, especially for documents and media assets.
To reduce your storage costs, you can identify and remove content that no longer provides value to your readers. This process starts by figuring out what counts as “low-value” and often requires help from a developer who can query Arc XP’s APIs.
Understand what you are paying for
Arc XP charges for two main types of storage:
Document storage - this includes the most recent versions of stories, galleries, collections, video playlists, photo lightboxes, redirects, pages, templates, authors, and site sections across all environments.
Asset storage - this includes photos and videos stored in Arc XP, whether they are managed in Photo Center, Video Center, Author Service, or Site Service across all environments.
Common places to look for deletable content
Start with the areas that tend to accumulate the most unused or outdated items:
Sandbox environment content
Your Sandbox environment likely contains a lot of test content, like stories, redirects, and photos. Because Sandbox data is not publicly visible, it usually has no SEO or editorial value. To manage this content, you can:
Set a cutoff date (for example, delete anything older than three to five years).
Confirm with editorial teams that old Sandbox stories or images are not being referenced.
Remove testing content that is just taking up space.
Unpublished Production content
In Production environments, you might have stories or images that were never published, especially if your organization pulls in content from wire services or other feeds. To help identify these unpublished items:
Search for unpublished stories and photos older than a specific date.
Exclude any photos placed in lightboxes (which might be saved for future use).
Redirects
Arc XP supports several kinds of redirects, but only document-level redirects (also known as vanity redirects) contribute to storage costs.
Document-level redirects are linked directly to stories and do not change when the story is unpublished. To reduce storage costs:
Identify redirects that no longer work (as in, they lead to 404 errors).
Evaluate redirects that still work but are barely used (for example, one click in six months).
Decide whether the small SEO benefits are worth the monthly cost.
Delete Sandbox redirects altogether, because they provide no SEO value.
Once you have your list of existing redirects, Arc XP recommends you:
Remove all redirects that result in a 301 or 302.
Evaluate your 301/302 redirects to see why they are in place and if they are still necessary. For example, redirects from old CMS URLs to new CMS URLs.
Unused published photos
Even if a photo is published, it might not actually be used in any stories or galleries. A published photo is a candidate for deletion if:
Does not appear in any story or gallery
It is not included in a lightbox
Note
In Photo Center, each photo’s edit page shows where it is used, but not which lightboxes it is included in. You must have a developer check for lightbox references.
Unused published wire stories
If you ingest and publish wires on import and store them in a dedicated section for editors to choose from, you most likely have a buildup of published but unused wire stories that can be cleaned up. A published story is a candidate for deletion if:
It is a wire story ingested from an external feed.
It is published on a website section without public access.
Query your content with developer scripts
Because Arc XP data is stored behind APIs, a developer can help you query your content, apply filters based on your low-value criteria, and export results to CSV files.
You can review those files, flag content to delete, and have your developer remove them.
Arc XP offers GitHub template scripts to help you get started. These scripts can list unused or old content, provide status data for that content, and be customized to fit your specific needs.
The GitHub template scripts repository includes documentation intended for developers that explains how to run the script templates and interpret their output. It also highlights areas where further analysis, beyond the scope of the templates, might be beneficial.
For example, you might want to evaluate whether certain story redirects or wire stories flagged for deletion are still generating enough traffic to justify keeping them. Performing this traffic analysis requires external data sources — specifically, CDN logs collected in a data analytics platform like Splunk (which falls outside the capabilities of these scripts).
Note
To unlock this deeper level of insight, you need access to CDN logs and the analytics tooling to evaluate them. If you do not have a setup for this, contact your Technical Account Manager. They can help you arrange CDN log delivery or discuss options for a paid engagement with Arc XP to perform this advanced analysis based on the CSV outputs that you generate.
Reducing storage fees in Arc XP takes some analysis, but the potential savings can be worth it for your organization. Focus on deleting outdated content, cleaning up Sandbox environments, removing unused photos, wires, and redirects, and partnering with your developers to analyze your content at scale.
By cleaning up low-value content, you can save on costs and keep your content system cleaner and easier to manage.