7 октября 2019
Low performance and working speed are issues of any website. If a website runs slow and it takes long to load its pages, the customer will not wait and go away to the competitors’ websites, and your sales will decrease. The website of a company is its face, so it has to work fast and reliably without causing negative emotion in the customers. But what is needed for a website to work properly and satisfy the customers’ needs?
A technical audit of your website will help. It is done to search and eliminate the causes of decreases in performance, security breaches and website errors. In this article, we will tell you what built-in tools of Bitrix will help you to carry out a small audit and identify the issues of your website. We will make the reservation right away that in this article, we will speak about the Bitrix tools only. The full-scale audit of a Bitrix website implies a more deep analysis and expert evaluation, and we will review its initial steps.
Technical audit
A technical audit of a website is a comprehensive analysis of a website’s performance and the quality of its code. To carry out an audit of a Bitrix website, you have to seek aid from the respective specialists who know the platform and, in addition to the analysis, will be able to eliminate the errors and make improvements.
Bitrix has many tools for analysis of the website work, project quality, evaluation of the performance, security and other elements. It is wrong not to use the tools provided by the platform, especially when the issue is not identified.
An audit will provide the answers to the following questions:
- the web pages take long to load;
- the website is down, an error is displayed;
- security issues;
- heavy server load;
- and other issues.
Website check using the built-in tools of Bitrix
This involves the system tools evaluating the performance of the website and providing recommendations for improvement. In most cases, such analysis provides insight into what the issue is, and what has to be the direction of the analysis.
System check
Configuration check
The System check tool is the first element of the website the developers check after the installation. Using it, you will obtain the overall answer concerning the condition and working capacity of the website’s critical functions. Those are the elements of the system such as the working capacity of the mail, databases, agents, modules of the server, etc.
If the check of an element is successfully passed, you will see a checkmark and a green message against it. In the contrary case, you will see a red message and the exclamation mark.
For understanding what the issue is, there is also the question mark on the right side: it will provide the answer to what requires correction. However, it does not always include the full answer to what actions should be taken in case of an issue. Therefore, a specialist’s assistance will be required.
In addition to that, it is important to understand that not all of the listed elements of a website require fast response and a solution to an issue. The website can work well without them.
Core check
In addition to the check of the website, the rights to the files and folders of the website should also be checked. The point is that for the correct work of a website, namely the opening of pages and no security issues, the rights to the folders and files should be properly assigned.
In case of errors identification, this tool displays 5 first files that require correction of the access rights.
Performance monitor
Configuration testing
Using the configuration testing, you can test and obtain the server performance evaluation. Beside the evaluation column, the reference valuation is shown on this page, a recommended value that is required for the stable functioning of a website. In your hosting, it can be different: in some places, it can be lower, in others it can be higher, which is acceptable if the values are small.
During the configuration testing, you should pay attention to two important valuations: configuration and average response rate. Those valuations not only depend on the capacity of the server but also the quality of the code writing.
Hence, if the performance of the server is good and the valuation of the configuration and the average response time is low, you should check the code of the website.
Testing of the Bitrix settings
This tab displays the testing results of various metrics that do affect the performance of the Bitrix itself. If the value of a metric is not optimal, the recommendation and the instruction for improvement of the configuration are shown beside the value.
For a steady performance, attention should be paid to the caching settings.
Measurement of the web pages performance
When the performance monitor is switched on for a certain amount of time, you will see the most loaded and visited web pages in the performance measurement.
In addition to that, the tool checks the configuration of the pages’ components, and if the monitoring identifies an error, it will be displayed in the Development Errors column.
The Average Response Time column shows the speed of the page’s opening. Normally, the main page and the catalogue are the most loaded and slow pages. You should analyze the code of the templates of the components on the pages the average response time of which is over 0.5 seconds.
Quality monitor
This tool is the checklist that is needed to check the quality of the projects completed before delivery to the customer. Using those tests, you will be able to check if the project meets the quality requirements at that time.
The testing includes compulsory and optional tests. All compulsory tests shall be successfully passed. The result of each test and the set of recommendations for the solution of issues is displayed.
Security scanner
The Security Scanner tool enables you to identify the website’s security vulnerabilities, provides recommendations and instruction on how to patch them. However, even with an instruction describing the steps of how to carry out the actions, in some cases, you need the assistance of a specialist to do so.
Speed of the website
Using this tool, you will be able to evaluate the current speed of the website and see by the graphs what pages are heavy and take longer to load.
According to Bitrix, a website works slowly if its loading time is over 1.5 seconds. Most online stores can show such value because the components of the catalogue include heavy functionality, and the main page and the catalogue pages are the loaded pages.
Those graphs can also help to evaluate the speed of display of the page. If the display of the front end is the issue, you will need further analysis using the external tools.
Conclusion
We have reviewed the tools that are the most often used to check the performance of the websites and their configurations. Not always can the results of tests and the final valuations provide answers to your questions and show you why the website runs slow, for example. Such results can provide insight into where further analysis should be carried out and where the issue should be looked for.
Therefore, the check using the built-in tools cannot identify all of the website’s issues but will help you in finding them. In most cases, to carry out an audit, you should hire specialists to check everything: code, website, the capacity of the server and other metrics. In fact, if you already know the issue, you will not incur considerable costs to carry out the audit. Describe the issue to the specialists: it will be enough for them to do their part. The built-in tools of Bitrix will help you in it. This is what the audit of a website should begin with.
Seek aid from our specialists if your website runs slow, displays error messages, or if there are other issues with your website.
