Strategy for Fixing Errors

Written by: Anne Holz | IANR Media

The Web Audit report scores your site and helps you identify and fix HTML errors. If a site has hundreds of pages, a Web Audit report may take several days to go through. Below is a strategy to help identify which errors to fix first and how to fix them. Keep in mind, though a score of 100% is desirable it's not always possible especially when code is embedded on your page from other sites like twitter and pinterest. A score of 80% or above is generally considered doing well.

The Web Audit checks for four types of errors.

• UNLedu Framework
• Link Checker
• W3C HTML Validator
• Accessibility

Webaudit Report Common Errors

View a list of common Web Audit report errors and tips on how to fix them. If you have errors you'd like added to the list, please copy and paste the entire error message and email it to anneh@unl.edu

Webaudit Strategy

1. To get to the front page of your Web Audit report, click the "new report" link in the UNLwebaudit email or go to the webaudit website and click "MY SITES" on the top red nav bar and click on your site (if you don't see MY SITES, check that you are logged in).
2. Fix broken links (Not Found (404)) and missing alt attributes first since these affect the user experience. These can be found under the "Link Checker" and "Accessibility" sections of the Web Audit report.
   
3. Click the "View all hot spots…" link under a section, to view the full list of pages with ERRORS and NOTICES. Ignore the NOTICES for now, only ERRORS affect your score. Click the ERRORS heading to sort the table. Only the pages with a number greater than 0 in the ERRORS column need fixed.
4. When you click a PAGE link, it will display all the errors on that page under the framework, link checker, w3c html validator and accessibility sections. Next to each section you'll see a P(pass) or NP (no pass). You only need to fix the errors in the sections that display NP. The errors you need to fix will display "FAIL" in the "PASS/FAIL" column (again, ignore the ones that say notice). Click "Fix" to display more information on what the error is and how to fix it.
   

   "How to Fix...":

   All of the items below will not display. Which items display depends on the type of error.

   • "Description" tells you what the error is.
   • "Suggested Fix" tells you how to fix it.
   • "Found on page" links to the page with the error on it.
     • If you click "View Page" it will take you to the page on the site with the error. When logged into your site, you can click the "edit" tab to fix the error in the Editor.
       
     • If the error is a broken link, in most cases either the page/document was moved or it no longer exists. If it no longer exists, remove the link. If it moved, find out where it moved to and change the link in the Editor.
     • If the error is "Img element missing an alt attribute" you need to add an alt attribute in the image tag.
       Example
       

        <img src="Images/nebraska-map.jpg" alt="Map of Nebraska">

   • "Location on page" displays a code snippet containing the error if applicable.
   
   
5. Run a new scan periodically as you work on fixing errors. Some errors may be duplicated under different sections of the Web Audit or fixing one may inadvertently fix others. Running a new scan will remove all the fixed errors from the list.
   • Click "Rescan this page" to clear out the errors on a single page after you've fixed the error on it. An email report will not be sent. A page scan will generally run quicker than a site scan but still may take awhile.
     
   • Click "Start a new site scan" after fixing several pages of errors. All site admins will receive an email with the updated Web Audit report each time a new site scan is submitted.
6. After fixing broken links and accessibilty errors and running new site scans. Click "Current Report" on the Web Audit grey navigation bar. Scroll down to the "Pages" error section. Sort the "ERRORS" column and click a page link to view the errors (same as #3 above). Fix all the errors in each section with NP and click "Rescan this page" when done. Repeat for each page.
7. As you add new pages or update existing pages check that the HTML is valid to prevent additional Web Audit errors from occurring. You can enter the page URL on the W3C Markup validation Website to check for errors.