Content Health Monitor (Preview)
This technical post takes a look at the new Content Health Monitor and how it connects together. It is similar to the existing AI Hub / Client modules, with their central point of access, with an integration to my (in development) Website Toolkit site audit service.
The three parts required to work:
- Content Health Monitor Hub: Enabled on your management site
- Content Health Monitor: Enabled on individual client sites
- Website Toolkit Crawler: A centrally managed service with companion WP plugin.
Content Health Monitor Hub
The Hub is the central point of communication for all client sites. When a client site requests a single page / post content audit it will send the request to your Hub, which logs and forwards the request to the Website Toolkit service.
The Hub has settings for your Crawler URL / API token. Currently this points to a centrally managed service, this flexibility keeps the door open for agencies wishing to run their own dedicated Website Toolkit install on a VPS they manage. You can also set the default allowance of monthly single page scans each site can trigger.
Depending on your workflow, you may wish for all result emails to be delivered to yourself / your account management team, providing easy oversight of client content creation. When a client keeps publishing content with broken email addresses this could be a good conversation point to get in touch and offer a quick call to cover how to add them correctly.
Alternatively, the content author on the client site can receive a copy of the email directly (a sample of that is shown further down).
Currently client sites can be added individually, and have their monthly on-demand page check quota set. When a client site is registered a connection string is provided for use in the Client module.
A simple summary shows the number of scans used and when their last request was made. From here you can regenerate the connection string, or revoke it case of a client leaving your services.
A simple Scan Log lists requests from client sites that have been sent via the Hub. After a successful crawl the Website Toolkit lets the Hub know if the crawl completed and if it was a pass / fail. The Hub passes the completion notification to the Client site, which allows it to retrieve additional information.
Content Health Monitor (Client Site)
On the client site you can activate the Content Health Monitor and paste in the connection string provided when the site was registered in the Hub. Clicking Import will extract the details for you to save. After saving click Test Connection to check everything is ok.
With the initial connection in place you can see which post types are recognised by ToggleWP on the client site and enable / disable them from being checked. For example, if your site has FAQ post types that are only displayed within existing page content you’d not want to check them, whereas events with unique URL’s you would want checked.
On-demand audits are run when content is first published, or published content is updated.
Further down the page there is the Scan Log, which provides a quick total of checks that passed or had issues. From here you have a quick way to access the Content Health screen, also accessed via ToggleWP > All Content Checks on the menu.
On this test site I had 2 intentionally broken blog posts, with a different number of issues on each. Clicking “View Report” on one of the Checked URLs will open the embedded view of Website Toolkit’s report.
As the Website Toolkit service is currently on development hosting it’ll provide a button to view it full screen outside of the client’s WordPress site.
The Posts / Pages screens will display a Health column, letting the content manager know if issues were discovered.
Results Email
The summary email includes simple branding for the freelancer / agency based on the API Token used. This is managed centrally via the Website Toolkit service as part of the onboarding process.
The free tier of the service includes up to 3 sponsor messages, as well as a “Tip” which is based on the CMS detected (As Website Toolkit can crawl non-WordPress sites it will attempt to guess the platform used, if any).
The email provides a way to view the results without logging into the Client WordPress site by showing the hosted summary (shown above).
Single content checks will be passed to the Google PageSpeed Insights service for mobile / desktop checks, and includes a link to its report. Occasionally PSI takes too long to run its own checks and the email will say “Unavailable”. This saves delaying the email for an extended period of time.
Further down the email you can see a summary of the issues found.
Would you like to try it on your client sites?
The Website Toolkit service on-demand audits are currently in preview, which means bug fixes and tweaks are likely every few days. As this service is centrally managed I can update it without anyone noticing.
The Content Health modules may also require some UI polish as well – unless there are show stopping bugs these tweaks will be rolled into one larger update to avoid daily releases.
To try it out on your client sites please get in touch via my Friendly Web Guy contact page.
What about full site audits?
My Website Toolkit plans will also cover full site audits, including login protected content. This will be more widely available once I’m happy with the on-demand checks.