Site Checking Tools/Utilities
Just wondering what all checks people do on sites they are developing before they go live. Mainly wanting a decent list for others to find so they can use.
EDIT: this has expanded to more of a list of useful tools for checking sites in general
- W3C HTML Validation - Check each design template to make sure they are coded properly
- W3C CSS Validation - Check each design template to make sure they are styled properly
- Web Page Analyzer - Check each design template for things such as server requests and page weights.
- Cynthia Says™ Web Content Accessibility Report - Check each design template for accessibility. While it is best to try to be as accessible as possible anyhow, certain sites you may work on REQUIRE to be accessible.
- Inspyder Insite - This one isn't free, but well worth the $50 if you do a lot of sites. Enter the URL and let it go checking links (even finds them in javascript code) and spelling on an whole site. Very good for sites where the client is using their CMS to enter their own content.
- seo-browser.com - See what your site looks like to the search engines. There is a drop down to see different ways different engines see them.
Note, many of these items can be found in the Web Developer Toolbar, this and Firebug are two must have add-ons for firefox.
There is my main list, if I think of anything else I'll add them. Feel free to add your own, but lets try to keep "discussion" down and this more of a reference list for others.
-Greg
webdesigner posted this at 07:19 — 21st July 2009.
They have: 31 posts
Joined: Jun 2009
I always used W3C Markup Validation Service, validating web documents is an important step which can dramatically help improving and ensuring their quality.
Greg K posted this at 00:34 — 24th July 2009.
He has: 2,145 posts
Joined: Nov 2003
More tools I have come across:
Here are some additional tools I have come across:
Xenu2 Fast little tools for quickly checking for link errors and listing out all items on your site. Report has many details. Not the fanciest looking tool , but quite effective. (hint, right click on an item and choose properties to see what pages on the site link to the item)
Feed The Bot Another site spider site to show you what search engines see at your site Give good list of links and keywords
Yahoo Site Explorer While Google is the big boy on the block this is a nice site where you don't have to be logged in to checksites. Enter your URL and it will show you what all is indexed on it by Yahoo. NICE PART: it will also show what sites it found that link to you site (similar to doing [B]site:www.whatever.com[/B] and [B]link:www.whatever.com[/B] on a Google search)
Fiddler For more advances checking/trouble shooting of sites, provides a local proxy that will let you see all your internet traffic. Great for tracking down connections on interactive sites, especially with AJAX calls. (I used this on someone's site that was hacked to figure out what file it was that made google trigger the site as an "attack site" which stops many current browsers from going there). This has tons of features, and I'm still learning new things on it. Again, more for advanced developers.
Enjoy.
-Greg
Greg K posted this at 18:13 — 28th July 2009.
He has: 2,145 posts
Joined: Nov 2003
Here is another site that I was made aware of by seo-browser.com (under their advanced tools and via e-mails with them):
http://www.copyscape.com/
Enter a page and it will search for sites that are possibly using your content on their pages and highlight results for you.
(some people don't realize that some companies can pay thousands of dollars for marketing research to optimize their wording, same as photos and designs)
Nice.
-Greg
axl985 posted this at 13:53 — 19th September 2009.
They have: 6 posts
Joined: Sep 2009
Interesting topic. And a useful one.
Before my sites go live, I want to make sure that all the links are good and working. I use this broken link checker to make sure that all my url links are intact. Leaves a bad impression on a first time visitor if a link is not going anywhere.
mrgilb posted this at 15:19 — 30th September 2009.
They have: 25 posts
Joined: Sep 2009
Hey thanks for links I already use some of them and love them.
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