The last two assignments of my Research Methods course is directly related to my thesis paper, and is helping me put it all together! Now I am researching online tools I can evaluate the website with, to prove or disprove WordPress as an adequate platform for building a website. So far, I am testing for Usability, Performance, Code Quality and Security. And the verdict isn’t in yet.
One test I ran yesterday, Google Page Speed, gave me a 51% for desktop loading speed, and urged me to consider compressing my files on the website. Since I have no control over site compression, I looked for a WordPress plugin that might give me the gzip compression Google Page Speed suggested. The plugin I found hadn’t been tested with the current version of WordPress, but I took a chance and installed it. Today, after running an analysis on the website through Google Page Speed, I was given an 81/100 for desktop, and a 65/100 for mobile. Considering that I don’t have a mobile version of the site, (and I am unsure if I can do it in WordPress), this is good news.
To evaluate the site’s HTML5 Compatibility, I analyzed the website with modern.ie, a tool that “detects common coding practices that may cause compatibility problems or prevent users from getting the best possible experience on a webpage.” Some of the findings include the following:
CSS Prefixes–“We’ve found that this webpage may have missing vendor-specific prefixes or may have implemented vendor-specific prefixes when they are not required in common CSS properties. This may cause compatibility problems with how this webpage renders in Internet Explorer or other modern browsers.”
Browser Detection-“We suggest that you implement feature detection – a practice that first determines if a browser or device supports a specific feature and then chooses the best experience to render based on this information. You may implement feature detection as an alternative to browser detection through a framework like Modernizr or through feature detection code.” The tool says this is important because, “Your users may not be getting this webpage’s best experience in modern browsers like Internet Explorer 9 or 10.”
Optimize Images-“We’ve found that you can save 27289 bytes by optimizing the images on your page. We would like to show you the minimum savings you could make by using an Image Optimization service such as Kraken.io. There are currently 19 images which can be optimized, saving a total of 27289 bytes.” The tool says this is important because unoptimized or uncompressed images can drastically affect how quickly your users can download your web page. Slow-downloading pages have an adverse effect on both user experience and bounce rates, and can also be expensive for users accessing your content from devices such as smartphones and tablets.”
In terms of usability, my website could use some work, and had it not been for the fact that the site was built in WordPress, I might have been able to tweak the site as this tool has suggested. However, I haven’t found any plugins that can accomplish these fixes.
I ran an online tool called W3C Link Checker , and found 1 broken link (a comment feed link by WordPress), 1 link that could not be checked because of robot exclusion rules (the Facebook link was created by one of my social media plugins, and one I would have to check manually), and 1 link that would not allow the test (the Instagram link was also created by one of my social media plugins, and would have to be checked manually). The tool also found 2 permanent redirects: the first was created for Twitter by one of my plugins, and the other was created by WordPress. I think these errors are pretty minor, all things considered.
Using W3C HTML Validator, I tested for Code Quality, and found only 7 errors: three errors pertained to the social media icons generated by one of my plugins; one error referred to another plugin’s slideshow shortcode; the three remaining referred to end tags that were missing, which when I viewed the source code in Firefox, I couldn’t find the errors mentioned.
I might decide to analyze the website further using a few more tools I find on the Web Developer Checklist (http://webdevchecklist.com/), but if I were to stop here, I’d say that, despite not having total control over the website for tweaking purposes and the originality factor, WordPress seems to work…
Christina Ruiz 