FAO Web guide: 7.1 Testing approaches

Web Guide home 1. Introduction 2. Web publishing basics 3. Planning 4. Content collection 5. Design 6. Construction 7. Testing 8. Launch 9. Maintenance 10. Writing for the Web Resources 1.1 FAO and the Internet: What is an FAO Web site? 1.2 Quality criteria of Web sites 1.3 An introduction to Web accessibility at FAO 1.4 Electronic publishing at FAO 2.1 Content quality 2.2 Roles in Web publishing 2.3 Web site quality clearance and continuity 2.4 Policy and legal matters 2.5 Language coverage policy 2.6 Web site traffic monitoring 2.7 Static and dynamic content 2.8 Really Simple Syndication (RSS) 2.9 Social Media Guidelines 2.10 Current server structure at FAO 3.1 What and (who) is the site for and what is it about?3.2 Define the Web site subject scope 3.3 Define your audience 3.4 Identify resources 3.5 How to track and share planning decisions 4.1 Developing a content inventory 4.2 FAO content repositories 4.3 Metadata 5.1 Review user needs 5.2 Defining information architecture 5.3 Prepare interface design 5.4 Define technical implementation 5.5 Tracking design implementation 6.1 Management of files/naming 6.2 HTML and coding 6.3 Use of style sheets 6.4 Graphics 6.5 Conversion of electronic documents 6.6 Language encoding 6.7 Link management 6.8 Printable pages 6.9 Providing access to search 6.10 Domains, URLs and aliases 6.11 Tools 7.1 Testing approaches 7.2 How to use the test environment 8.1 Launch checklist 8.2 Promotion 9.1 Quality assurance and routine checking 9.2 Update procedures for Web sites 9.3 Web usage analysis 9.4 Evaluation of Web sites 10.1 Writing a page of text 10.2 Organizing your text on the page 10.3 How to optimize content for search engines 10.4 How to write feedback, error messages 10.5 Quotations 10.6 Non-discriminatory language Checklists Acronyms Newsletter Guidelines Policies Procedures Web resources Tag cloud Contacts 2.3a Data ownership 2.3b Regulation of access to servers 2.3c Clearance of Web sites by OCP 2.4a Country names, flags and maps 2.4b The fao.org domain, subdomains and root directories 2.4c Use of FAO emblem and logos 2.4d Politically sensitive material 2.6a FAO Web sites: the user perspective 2.6b How to gather user information: user research 2.6c Designing for the user 2.6d Page size and downloading 2.7a Static content 2.7b Dynamic content 2.7c Content Management Systems (CMS) 2.9a FAO and Facebook 2.9b FAO and Flickr 2.9c FAO and Google+2.9d FAO and LinkedIn 2.9e FAO and SlideShare 2.9f FAO and Twitter 2.9g FAO and Wikipedia 2.9h FAO and YouTube 4.3a What is metadata?4.3b Why embed metadata in Web pages?4.3c How to embed basic metadata in the HTML head section 4.3d How to create or improve current metadata 4.3e FAO standards for encoded metadata 4.3f Metadata, search engines and their robots 5.2a Identify Web pages and subject categories 5.2b Define navigation 5.2c Define metadata and search requirements 5.3a Corporate visual identity 5.3b Web site design usability principles 6.1a How to use the FTP server 6.2a HTML and XHTML 6.2b Browser compatibility 6.2c New windows and pop-ups 6.2d JavaScript 6.2e HTML title and metadata tags 6.3a CSS and Web accessibility 6.3b Cascading Style sheets (CSS) and browser compatibility 6.4a Graphic formats 6.4b Use of images on the Web 6.4c Photos 6.5a Converting Word documents into PDF 6.6a Guidelines for language encoding 6.6b Multilingual interfaces 6.7a Linking files across languages 6.7b Links to the FAO home page, FAO copyright and AskFAO 6.7c Absolute and relative links 6.7d Avoid spamming on e-mail addresses 6.8a How to prepare print-safe Web pages using CSS 6.8b Other ways of preparing print-safe Web pages 6.11a Recommended editing tools for Web site construction 6.11b Graphics, document and conversion tools 9.1a Maintaining quality 9.1b Content freshness
	Web Guide > webguide > 7. Testing > 7.1 Testing approaches
	7.1 Testing approaches Policy Before its release, an FAO Web site must comply with the FAO Web Quality Assurance Checklist. Please ensure that before a request for the publication of a Web site is sent to OCP, it has been thoroughly tested according to these requirements. User testing It may be advisable to ask members of staff to test your new Web site for usability and navigability before it is published online. This is also useful in order to ensure that everything is working correctly. See Performance testing at Usability Net for more guidance on how to conduct user testing. Performance testing tools There are various tools available to check a Web site in a few minutes, in particular broken links, orphan files, slow pages and missing attributes. Linkbot has been used extensively in FAO to check broken links. However, Linkbot is no longer supported by Watchfire, but its functionality has been incorporated into WebQA a Web site quality-testing tool designed for small, medium and departmental Web sites. WebQA automatically crawls through your site and tests for broken links, slow pages, spelling errors, orphaned files, broken forms, application functionality problems. This software has not been tested by OCP, but more information can be found at the WebQA Web site. HTML Link Validator is a professional tool for checking Web sites for broken links. This fast and easy to use link checker has no limitation on the number of links and files to check. It checks links case sensitively, can validate thousands HTML documents at once, creates various file lists and finds unused files on Web sites or in local folders. This tool is currently being used by OCP. More information is available at the Lithops software Web site. Macromedia's Dreamweaver: It is possible to check broken links and validate the code of Web pages and CSS. Validate the code with W3C The W3C Markup Validation Service is a free service that checks Web documents (in formats like HTML and XHTML) for conformance to W3C Recommendations and other standards. It is also possible to use the W3C CSS Validation Service to check Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in (X)HTML documents or standalone for conformance to W3C recommendations. Other W3C validators are: RDF Validation Service; and Validator for XML Schema.	References and resources FAO Web Quality Assurance Checklist