To add a new website to your Silktide account, go to your home screen by selecting either Websites in the main navigation or the Silktide icon at the top left of the screen.
On your home screen there will be a + New website button at the top right of the screen under your profile icon. Selecting this will open the new website interface.
If you are unable to see the button to add a new website, this could be due to having insufficient permissions. In this case, you should contact your account administrator to update your permissions or add the new website.
Website testing settings
Once you've completed the initial steps to create a new website, you can always fine-tune your testing results using the following settings options. You can access these settings for any website by selecting Settings from the top right of the website report.
1. Website settings
This is the only required section. Basic website settings requires that we set a homepage for the report. This is going to be the starting point for our crawler to find new pages when the website is tested, so be sure that this URL is correct.
Once the homepage URL has been set, select “Go” or hit the Enter key for the URL to be verified. If the URL requires HTTP authentication, the login details will be requested after the verification.
Additional options in order to set up a website report in full:
Name: The name that will be presented within the platform in reference to this website report.
Max pages: The maximum number of pages that will be tested. Note: The full value will be deducted from the allowance of an account, so if you set your max pages to 1000 for a website with 50 pages, the additional 950 pages will still be taken up by this website.
Max documents: The maximum number of documents that will be tested. Note: The full value will be deducted from the allowance of an account, so if you set 50 max documents to a website that has 5 documents, the additional 45 pages will be taken up by this website.
Languages: The languages to apply for your spelling and grammar results.
Tags: Optional, if using tags to organize your reports. Select existing tags from the list or create new tags as required. Tagging enables your websites and sections to be grouped for easier filtering or comparisons, such as within Dashboards.
The Schedule sets how often the website will be retested automatically. The minimum that can be set within the Custom duration is every 5 days.
Once your options have been set, it’s important to remember to select Save to confirm.
Optional Settings
The following settings are optional, so long as the website settings have been set up, the website can be tested and the default settings will be used. If tweaks to additional settings are desired, then continue reading for optional settings that can be adjusted.
2. Permissions
Permissions tell Silktide what each user or role is allowed to do in a website report. At the top-right corner of the list of users and roles, there is a search bar that can be used to filter this list.
Options grant progressive access from left to right, for example, if "Can test" is enabled, then "Can see" and "Can make decisions" will automatically be enabled as well.
User/role permission options:
Can see: User/role can see contents of the website report
Can make decisions: User/role can approve issues or ignore checks on the website
Can test: User/role can use the retest functionality to retest the entire website
Can admin: User/role can change core website settings, including to delete the report
Once users and roles have been given the appropriate permissions, clicking the Save button will confirm and apply the settings.
3. What we test
When website testing takes place, it’s important to be able to only allow in pages that conform to specific URL pathways.
Silktide will take care of this step for you by default if you've configured your homepage URL correctly, but if you want to fine-tune the pages included in your report, use these rules.
The 3 rules that can be adjusted to limit the scope of the tests are:
Allowed rules: set the URL parameters that must be met in order for a webpage to be tested
Denied rules: set the URL parameters that will prevent a webpage from being tested
Forced pages: a list of webpages that will be tested and included in the report, regardless of any prior allowed or denied rules
Learn more about how to configure your allowed and denied URL rules.
4. Sections
If your website contains different areas managed by multiple teams or departments, it might be easier to split your website report into the sections covered by those teams.
Sections allow each team to focus on the issues and progress within their own areas of the website.
New sections can be added by selecting the New section button within the Sections tab inside Settings.
Learn more about configuring website sections.
5. SEO
To track keyword performance, add a new search campaign to a website by selecting the Add campaign button.
Give the campaign a name so that it can easily be identified, add your tracked keywords and select the geographic locations where ranking performance should be reported from.
Learn more about setting up an SEO search campaign in Silktide.
6. Uptime
Uptime monitoring can be set to alert users when a website is down or otherwise cannot be accessed.
Multiple settings can be adjusted when creating a new monitor:
Monitor name: a name for this uptime monitor to be identified by
URL for page to check: the URL that will trigger an alert if it becomes unavailable
Must contain HTML: allows alerts to be triggered if specific HTML elements are not present on the tested page
Must not contain HTML: allows alerts to be triggered if specific HTML elements are present on the tested page
Max allowed seconds: the number of seconds it takes for a website to load before it’s considered unavailable
Assignees: users set to receive any monitor alerts
Sections: if a website has sections, the monitor can be split based on which sections should be able to see this uptime monitor
Once your options have been set, select the save button to confirm your changes.
Learn more about how to configure uptime monitors.
7. Policies
Policies allow you to create custom checks that can test your website for nearly anything you want to test for.
Policies that already exist within an account can be seen in the table, some have which may be enabled by default.
To add these policies to your website, tick the relevant checkboxes to the left of the policy. Don’t forget to hit Save once you've chosen your selected policies.
Learn more about creating custom policies.
8. Experiences
Experiences allow you to test for website speed performance based on site user location, type of device, and type of internet connection.
To create a new experience, select the New page button.
The details required to create an experience are:
Page name: The name of the experience so that it can be identified
Page URL: The URL that should be tested against the experience
Sections: If the experience should be applied to sections, the relevant sections should be selected here
Experiences: Displays the experiences that have been set up and applied to the website.
Select Add experience to start adding the Location, Device, and Bandwidth details.
After any relevant experiences have been created and added to the page, select the Save button to confirm the details.
9. Advanced
The advanced settings should only be adjusted if you know what you’re doing and are looking to fix a specific problem.
The options that can be adjusted are:
Download timeout (seconds): The maximum time to wait when downloading a page, this can be useful if pages are quite slow to access
Wait (seconds): Wait this many seconds after downloading a page before testing, this can be useful if pages take time to load their content
Click selector: CSS selectors can be set to automatically close pop-ups, such as cookie banners. More information can be found in our How to remove pop-ups, banners, and more support article
Max connections: The maximum number of connections that Silktide can make to the site
User agent: The user agent that will be used when testing this site
Proxy location: A proxy can be set if access to the website is location specific. This can also be used to force the usage of specific IPs that can then be whitelisted.
Automatically block analytics and ads: If checked, this will attempt to block all known analytics and ads on tested pages
Ignore issues flagged by 3rd part plugins?: If checks, this will stop issues being created for 3rd party plugins (e.g. Google Maps) for this website.
Once the settings have been adjusted to the requirements of the website, click the Save button to confirm the choices.
If the settings have been adjusted as required, be sure to click Start testing at the bottom of the left-hand menu to get the website’s first test started.