Orphaned files are assets, such as a folder or page, that have been moved, renamed, or deleted without being unpublished from your live site. Orphaned files appear on your live site but are no longer accessible in Cascade. Website visitors may have access to the content and the asset will continue to appear in search results.

Remove Orphaned Files

Follow these steps to remove orphaned files only if a few are found. If a large number of orphaned files are discovered, contact us to help you remove them.

1. Identify the URL of the orphaned file (ex.: http://www.umt.edu/web/publish/orphan.php).
2. Recreate the asset in Cascade using the URL as the file path for the new asset.
   1. In our example, we would create a page with a system name of "orphan" in a folder with a system name of "publish" under the base folder for a file path of web/publish/orphan. The system names must exactly match the URL.
3. Unpublish the asset you recreate.
4. Navigate to the URL of the orphaned file and ensure that you receive a Page Not Found error.

Prevent Orphan Files

During the process of deleting, renaming or moving assets, do not check any of the boxes (they are unchecked by default) in the 'Advanced Unpublish Settings' section of the window that opens.