Development is a significant part of the labor costs of any Internet business. In this article we will talk about how to simplify and reduce the cost of this process.
Removing unused CSS
A programmer spends 90% of his time reading code. The less code, the faster the development.
By changing the design or removing old functions, programmers accidentally or out of laziness leave the CSS code of deleted elements. For example, there used to be a large slider on the main page, the programmer deleted the HTML and JavaScript code, but did not clean up the CSS files. Thus, the site contains the code of an element that is no longer in use.
Also, a huge amount of unused CSS is contained in sites that use ready-made templates. As a rule, templates have rich functionality that is used by 25%. The remaining 75% of the code is constantly downloaded by users, but never used.
All this extra code regularly requires the attention and time of programmers. To find and remove it, use our tool [CSS Code Cleaner] (/tools/clean-css “Free online CSS cleaning tool”).
Search for JavaScript errors
The browser executes JavaScript while the page is loading. If errors occur during this process, they are written to the console. If you visit the problem page, then you need to first open the console to see error messages. ASC will fully scan your site and let you know if errors occur when executing the JavaScript code of the page. You can scan one page here or the entire site at once using PRO access.
Search for broken pages
Often, after large-scale updates, you may find that some pages have stopped working. If the site is large, it is difficult to manually check it completely. To find broken pages, perform a full [site scan] (/pro “Site Alarm PRO access”) or use the special tool [Broken links] (/tools/broken-links “Check for broken links”).
Testing the mobile version
We regularly encounter a situation where some of the pages have a broken mobile version. Such errors are difficult to detect, as they appear randomly. For example, a content manager may upload a table that is too wide or an image that is too large to the page. Or the programmer will change the code in one place, and errors appear in unexpected places.
Site Alarm checks pages on 5 screens: computer, phone vertically, phone horizontally, tablet vertically, tablet horizontally and issues a report on the problems found. After major changes, we recommend a full scan of the site.
Touchscreen optimization
To make it convenient for the user to use the mobile version of the site, all active elements must be large enough to hit them with a finger. We check the size of buttons, links and form fields for a size sufficient for comfortable use. You can scan the page and get a visual report in our service [Adaptation to the touch screen] (/tools/finger-friendly “Checks the size of the buttons so that users’ fingers do not miss them.”).
SEO blunders
Often during the publication of new content, they forget about the basic SEO rules. There are dozens of them, and without their compliance, the potential of the page to attract traffic will be reduced. Checking manually is time-consuming and not reliable, as people often make mistakes. If your site consists of more than 10,000 pages, then you just need an automated tool to catch such blunders. If you have an online store, and correcting the errors found by Site Alarm will help you make at least 1 more sale, then [PRO access] (/pro “Site Alarm PRO access”) will already pay off!
Using Site Alarm will help you find and fix hundreds of problems in one fell swoop. A month of premium subscription costs like an hour of specialist work. A person physically will not have time to do the work that Site Alarm does.