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SiteMorse Function Guide
This SiteMorse Guide is part of a series introducing users to the system. Other companion documents, including the SiteMorse Quick Start Guide, are available from our website.
Web Results, providing customer support and project delivery for SiteMorse™
Website Function Website Performance (inc load and stress testing) HTML (W3C) Compliance Metadata (inc. Dublin Core & eGMS) Accessibility Compliance Brand, Corporate & Company Compliance Adaptive Availability Monitoring
www.sitemorse.com 01/12/2006
How to start using SiteMorse to improve your site
One of the powers of SiteMorse is its versatility, a staggering amount of detail is available after every report. For some using this power to its full potential can be a daunting prospect, to help this guide will walk you through our system.
Our suggested route demonstrates how a developer makes changes to their site and with the aid of SiteMorse tools understands and resolves any problems discovered by the report.
Overview:
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SiteMorse in Action
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Function Overview
The heart of the SiteMorse reports Function test accounts for 36% of the overall SiteMorse mark. Errors caused by HTML problems, broken links, “file not found” and many more are revealed here.
The help links (?) open a new window to provide further detail on each category.
To download the page results for later use click the zip icon in the bottom right hand corner.
Basic information can be gleamed from this page, for example the “badport” error occurs 4 times. Click on the error name for further details
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Sample Diagnostic Pages
Providing far more diagnostic information this page defines the exact error message, the page address it occurred on, the relevant line number and lastly how many times that particular error occurred.
This should be enough detail to correct the error. For a page specific summary click on the first URL.
Page Detail
Combining all the errors relevant to a single page, the message and the line numbers this information should be used to work through and resolve the problems as they occur in one document. As before help is available by clicking on the (?) links.
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PDF Overview
If the PDF panel on the function page indicates one or more broken links were found a red report link is displayed. The new page summaries both the bad links and the PDF files found without accessibility tagging, if any.
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Function Tests
35 function tests are conducted by SiteMorse, these are described on the following pages. file.flash.badchunking: File format error in Macromedia Flash SWF file Standards:
• Macromedia Flash File Format (SWF) Specification
Description:
A Macromedia Flash SWF file delivered by the web server violated the file format specification. The file could not be fully processed. It will almost certainly not play correctly in users' browsers. The file is either truncated or has become corrupt. file.flash.badsignature: Macromedia Flash SWF file is missing the file signature Standards:
• Macromedia Flash File Format (SWF) Specification
Description:
A Macromedia Flash SWF file delivered by the web server is missing its file signature header (FWS or CWS). The file has either become corrupt, or is simply not a Flash file (although the web server claims that it is). file.html.badmeta: Phrases in meta keywords tag must be separated by commas Description:
The "meta keywords" tag on an HTML page does not appear to have commas separating the keywords. Each keyword should be separated by commas, not spaces. Words separated by spaces are treated as single keywords - i.e. "holidays greece cyprus" will only be matched in a search engine if a user types exactly "holidays greece cyprus" and not just "holidays" or "greece" or "cyprus".
It is possible that the page actually does use commas to separate its keywords, but that each keyphrase on average has too many words. You should revise the keywords to use shorter phrases - the chances of a user typing in a long keyphrase exactly identical to yours into a search engine are very small.
Example:
© SiteMorse Limited Page 7 of 18 01/12/2006 file.html.longmeta: Meta tag content is too long Description:
The "meta keywords" or "meta description" tag on an HTML page is too long. Search engines will truncate or ignore the data provided. This diagnostic is generated if any item of your meta-data is 1024 bytes or longer.
Example:
• W3C - Style Guide for Online Hypertext
Description:
The page title on an HTML page was much too long. Page titles should be kept reasonably short, preferably under 64 characters long, in order that they act as a useful quick reference to what the page is about. Most browsers will truncate titles over around 80 characters long.
SiteMorse\u2122 generates a warning if the title is 80 characters or longer, and an error if the title is 128 characters or longer.
Example:
© SiteMorse Limited Page 8 of 18 01/12/2006 file.html.notitle: Title is generic 'untitled document' phrase Description:
The page title on an HTML page was a generic placeholder phrase such as untitled document. These are generally inserted automatically by HTML editing programs and should be replaced by a more meaningful title.
Example:
• RFC 2396 - Uniform Resources Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax, section 3.2
Description:
A URL used by your site included an invalid character in its authority section. The character may be incorrect, or it may need "escaping" to make the URL valid.
Example:
http://[hostname]/ file.url.badfragment: Illegal character in URL fragment section Standards:
• RFC 2396 - Uniform Resources Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax, section 4.1
Description:
A URL used by your site included an invalid character in its fragment section. The character may be incorrect, or it may need "escaping" to make the URL valid.
Example:
http://www.example.com/sales/#[march] file.url.badpath: Illegal character in URL path section Standards:
• RFC 2396 - Uniform Resources Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax, section 3.3
Description:
A URL used by your site included an invalid character in its path section. The character may be incorrect, or it may need "escaping" to make the URL valid.
Example:
http://www.example.com/sales/[march]/
© SiteMorse Limited Page 9 of 18 01/12/2006 file.url.badquery: Illegal character in URL query section Standards:
• RFC 2396 - Uniform Resources Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax, section 3.4
Description:
A URL used by your site included an invalid character in its query section. The character may be incorrect, or it may need "escaping" to make the URL valid.
Example:
http://www.example.com/sales.cgi?page=[march] file.url.badscheme: URL scheme must be specified in lower-case Standards:
• RFC 2396 - Uniform Resources Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax, section 3.1
Description:
A URL used by your site used a scheme specified using one or more upper-case characters. URL schemes must be specified in lower-case.
Example:
HTTP://www.example.com/ file.url.badurl: Illegal character in URL Standards:
• RFC 2396 - Uniform Resources Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax, section 2.4.3
Description:
A URL used by your site included an invalid character. The character may be incorrect, or it may need "escaping" to make the URL valid.
This mistake may cause an additional error to be reported due to the invalid character making not only the URL invalid as a whole, but a specific subsection of the URL invalid also.
Example:
http://www.example.com/sales.cgi?page="march"
© SiteMorse Limited Page 10 of 18 01/12/2006 file.url.exception: Exception while processing URL Standards:
• RFC 2396 - Uniform Resources Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax
Description:
An uncategorised error occurred while processing a URL. Refer to the error message for more information. file.url.offtop: Relative URL attempted to move beyond top level Standards:
• RFC 2396 - Uniform Resources Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax, section 5.2
Description:
A relative URL on a web page attempted to navigate off the top of the directory hierarchy. This may cause broken links on some browsers, although most browsers automatically compensate for the error, so it is difficult to spot in user testing.
Example:
url.fetch.accessdenied: Access is denied Standards:
• RFC 2616 - Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1, section 10.4.4
Description:
While attempting to fetch a file from a web server, an "Access Denied" message has been received. This usually indicates that the URL was incorrect, although it may mean that a public page has inadvertently linked to a private resource, or that a resource that was previously public has been made private.
Example:
HTTP/1.0 403 Forbidden
© SiteMorse Limited Page 11 of 18 01/12/2006 url.fetch.badcookie: Web server attempted to set invalid cookie Standards:
• RFC 2965 - HTTP State Management Mechanism • Netscape "Client Side State - HTTP Cookies" specification
Description:
A web server attempted to set an HTTP "cookie" but its request was invalid. This is usually because the cookie name or value contains invalid characters (they may not contain spaces or ; or ,), a parameter name contains invalid characters (they may only contain letters and hyphens) or an invalid expiry date format was used.
Example:
Set-Cookie: CUSTOMER=WILE_E_COYOTE; path=/; expires=Wed, 09 Nov 19 23:12:40 GMT url.fetch.badport: Server port in URL must be numerical Standards:
• RFC 2396 - Uniform Resources Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax, section 3.2.2
Description:
A URL used by your site used an invalid port number. Port numbers (which are, when present, after the : after the host name in a URL) must be specified as one or more digits.
Example:
http://www.example.com:eighty/ url.fetch.badscheme: URL scheme was unrecognised Description:
A URL used by your site used an unrecognised scheme. (The scheme specifies the method of fetching the data - for example http.) This error may be produced if you use the local- file scheme (file), if you mis-spell the scheme (e.g. htttp) or if you use an obscure scheme which is likely to be unavailable on most browsers.
Example:
htttp://www.example.com/ file://c/my%20web%20site/index.html
© SiteMorse Limited Page 12 of 18 01/12/2006 url.fetch.badstatus: Bad HTTP status returned by server Standards:
• RFC 2616 - Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1, section 6.1
Description:
While attempting to fetch a file from a web server, an invalid HTTP status line was received. The status line indicates whether or not the request was successful, and if not gives an indication why not. It must be of the form: HTTP/ is a 3-digit status code. Either this line was not according to the correct syntax, or it was missing.
Example:
HTTP/1.0 4 url.fetch.connref: Connection refused by server Description:
While attempting to fetch a file from a web server, the connection attempt was refused by the server. This means either that the link is broken in that it is pointing at a machine that does not serve web pages, or that the web server software was overloaded or not running during the test. url.fetch.emptylocation: Redirect code received but empty Location header given Standards:
• RFC 2616 - Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1, section 10.4.4
Description:
While attempting to fetch a file from a web server, the server indicated that a new URL should be used instead. However, the new URL given was blank.
Example:
HTTP/1.0 302 Found Location: url.fetch.exception: Exception while downloading file Description:
An uncategorised error occurred while attempting to download a file from a network server (e.g. a web server). Refer to the error message for more information.
© SiteMorse Limited Page 13 of 18 01/12/2006 url.fetch.noaddr: Host not found in DNS Description:
The address of a server could not be located in the DNS. All server names must be looked up in the Domain Name System to find their address before they can be contacted. This error is produced when the DNS indicated there was no server with the indicated name.
Example:
http://no-such-host.example.com/ url.fetch.noeoh: No end-of-headers found in HTTP response Standards:
• RFC 2616 - Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1, section 6.1
Description:
An HTTP response consists of headers followed by the response content. While attempting to fetch a file from a web server, the end-of-headers marker that indicates the start of the content was missing. This is a malformed response from the web server and the content could not be retrieved. url.fetch.nolocation: Redirect code received but no Location header given Standards:
• RFC 2616 - Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1, section 10.3
Description:
While attempting to fetch a file from a web server, the server indicated that a new URL should be used instead. However, no new URL was provided.
Example:
HTTP/1.0 302 Found url.fetch.notfound: File not found Standards:
• RFC 2616 - Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1, section 10.4.5
Description:
A web server has reported that a file expected to be present was not found. Either the URL is incorrect, or the file has been moved or deleted.
Example:
HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found
© SiteMorse Limited Page 14 of 18 01/12/2006 url.fetch.redirectloop: Redirect points back to the original page Standards:
• RFC 2616 - Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1, section 10.3
Description:
While attempting to fetch a file from a web server, the server indicated that a new URL should be used instead. However, the new URL is the same as one previously used in the same request - i.e. the server is creating an infinite circular loop of redirections.
Example:
HTTP/1.0 302 Found Location: /same-url url.fetch.timeout: downloading file Description:
An time-out occurred while attempting to download a file from a network server (e.g. a web server). This is usually because either the web server's network connection, or the web server itself, is too busy. url.fetch.unknownstatus: Unknown status code received from web server Standards:
• RFC 2616 - Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1
Description:
While trying to fetch a web page from a web server, an unknown status code was received. This may mean that the web server is having temporary difficulties, that the web server is misconfigured, that the URL is incorrect, or that there is a bug in the web application code on the web server.
Example:
HTTP/1.0 500 Internal Server Error url.mail.badsmtp: Mail server returned unexpected response Standards:
• RFC 2821 - Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
Description:
A mail server returned an unexpected response while verifying an email address. The mail server may be unavailable or misconfigured and will probably not be delivering email correctly for this address. Consult the mail server administrator.
Example:
554
© SiteMorse Limited Page 15 of 18 01/12/2006 url.mail.exception: Exception while verifying email address Description:
An uncategorised error occurred while attempting to verify an email address. Refer to the error message for more information. url.mailto.badaddr: mailto URL contains bad address Standards:
• RFC 0952 - DOD INTERNET HOST TABLE SPECIFICATION • RFC 1035 - DOMAIN NAMES - IMPLEMENTATION AND SPECIFICATION, section 2.3.1 • RFC 1123 - Requirements for Internet Hosts -- Application and Support, section 2.1 • RFC 2368 - The mailto URL scheme • RFC 2822 - Internet Message Format, section 3.4.1
Description:
A mailto URL used on your site contains a malformed email address. Email addresses must consist of one or more characters followed by an @ symbol and a domain name. Domain names may only contain alphanumeric characters and hyphen.
Example:
url.mailto.badheader: mailto URL contains unknown header Standards:
• RFC 2368 - The mailto URL scheme
Description:
A mailto URL used on your site tries to specify an unknown header. Although the syntax defined in RFC 2368 allows any header to be specified, in practice only a small subset of headers will work in most browsers. The subset of headers that will work in most cases are: to, cc, bcc, subject and body.
Example:
© SiteMorse Limited Page 16 of 18 01/12/2006 url.mailto.badoption: mailto URL contains bad option Standards:
• RFC 2368 - The mailto URL scheme, section 2.
Description:
A mailto URL used on your site contains a bad option. The options section of a mailto URL must consist of pairs of names and values, the name separated from the value by an = character and each pair separated from the next by an & character.
Example:
url.unknown.exception: Exception Description:
An uncategorised error occurred. Refer to the error message for more information. file.html.metascheme: Meta content does not match its declared scheme Description:
The "meta" tag has a scheme declared but the content provided is not valid under that scheme. For example, the W3CDTF scheme specifies a list of specific date and time formats that are allowable, and if the content does not match one of these then SiteMorse\u2122 will generate an error.
Example:
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SiteMorse Surveys
An interactive and dynamic system compiles the results of regular survey reports. Including an executive summary, report data, detailed site statistics and a site’s historical profile.
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