WordPress is currently the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world. It powers over 478 million websites, which accounts for about 43.7% of the total sites on the internet. It is the most used CMS to date, with over 62.5% of shares. Even some of the Fortune 500 companies rely on WordPress as the CMS of choice for their websites.

This is due to WordPress providing a robust ecosystem of functionality. Nonetheless, complications may ultimately occur with the update of your WordPress files, theme, or plugins. Even when developing a new website on the platform, you may encounter these issues.

If you own a WordPress website, it is inevitable that sooner or later, you’ll face a problem. Be it when updating the plugins, compatibility issues, or just updating WordPress in general. One problem tip-toes to another, ultimately causing your page to shut down. 

So, how do you approach this problem? That’s precisely what this post will be about. This post will walk you through the best practices and methodologies for WordPress site testing. An efficient and reliable website will maintain a great user experience while increasing traffic and search engine rankings.  

What Is Website Testing?

The process of assessing and verifying that a website is working optimally under different conditions is called website testing. The testing makes sure that the website is user-friendly, secure, and complies with industry standards. Every aspect of the site is tested, from functionality to compatibility across all browsers, user-friendliness, responsiveness across all devices, security, and performance. 

For every test, a different method is used. We will talk about these methods in more detail later.  

What is the importance of WordPress Testing?

Whether your website is newly developed or an already existing one, to ensure it’s working optimally, testing is imperative. It is understandably a tedious task, but a very important one. To sustain the quality of your website, it requires periodic checks and audits.

A well-tested website guarantees that its users encounter a favorable experience while navigating the site. This extends beyond mere navigation to encompass overall usability. Ensuring that the site exhibits responsiveness across a multitude of devices and functions seamlessly on various browsers. 

Regularly checked WordPress websites are also less likely to be compromised by cyber attacks. The risks in the fast-paced digital world of today are always changing in tandem with technology. You can find gaps and weaknesses in your security procedures with the use of ongoing, routine testing. It is your duty to guarantee the constant security of your users’ personal data.

Every new feature you want to include in your website must be thoroughly tested. It can potentially result in breaking the site and taking it down. While you recover from that failure, you’ll lose traffic, potential visitors, and credibility with it. It will impact your and your business’s reputation, ultimately leading to a loss of revenue.

What Are Different Types of Testing?

The website comprises a lot of different components. It employs themes and plugins to meet all user needs, from functionality to visual features. To test these different components, as well as the website as a whole, different techniques are used. Let’s break them down briefly.

Usability (UX) Testing

The purpose of this test is to check your WordPress website’s usability. It ensures that the design is user-friendly and intuitive. It also tests the responsiveness of the website across different devices. The goal is to assess the visual appeal of your website and the user experience it will provide for the target audience.

Functional Testing

Here, all the functional aspects of the sites are tested. It ensures that the links, forms, search functionalities, and any kind of interactive elements that you may have on your website are working as intended. This test focuses on the website requirements directly.

Cross Browser Testing

Cross-browser testing guarantees that the website delivers an exceptional user experience on all browsers. It also evaluates the compatibility of the site with various versions and updates of the same browser.

Compatibility Testing

This is a much broader technique than cross-browser testing. The consistency of user experience is a big factor in the reputation and reliability of the website. Compatibility testing is to determine that the user experience is consistent across all browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc), all operating systems (Windows, MacOS, Linux), and devices (phones, tablets, desktops, etc).

Visual Regression Testing

This technique is employed to identify any visual flaws or errors that may be caused by a variety of factors. These items may include elements that are absent or concealed, elements that are rendered off-screen, overlapping modules, and inconsistent fonts, styles, or alignments.

Performance Testing

The purpose of this test is to evaluate the website’s overall functionality, optimization, and speed. It is performed by testing server response times and page load speed. The tester also simulates high traffic on servers to evaluate the website’s functionality under such strain.

Database Testing

Here, the testers confirm that the information in the website’s database is accurate. They ensure that the data is safely and accurately stored on the servers and that it is safely retrieved and erased when necessary. 

Unit Testing

It is an extremely comprehensive testing method that tests each component or element of the code of your WordPress test site in isolation. It is intended to make certain that your WordPress website is clear of bugs. Your WordPress code undergoes individual testing for each component, function, and class. This testing is highly development-oriented; therefore, it is recommended that a professional developer be responsible for conducting it. Your entire website may be disastrously affected by a minor modification to the WordPress code.

Regression Testing

Every time a new feature or update is added to the website, regression testing is performed. The goal of this test is to check that no new updates or features that have been installed cause issues. Furthermore, it ensures that even after the upgrade, the present functionality continues to work properly. 

Security Testing

The threat of cyber-attacks becomes increasingly significant as technology advances. This type of testing involves the tester looking for security faults and vulnerabilities. To ensure that transactions and data are handled securely.

Some of these tests may be performed utilizing various WordPress testing plugins, such as Thrive Optimize, WordPress Beta Tester, WPScan, and BrowserStack.

Step-by-Step Guide: Testing Your WordPress Website

Following a detailed description of WordPress testing. Why is it important? We are ready to take action. We’ll go over a step-by-step method for properly testing your WordPress website like a professional. 

However, before we begin, a short piece of advice. Testing a website is a delicate procedure that necessitates updating the site’s code. If done without the proper expertise and care, it might lead to serious failures. You may always hire professionals to update your custom themes and plugins.

Step 1: What Is the Purpose Of Your Testing?

Before you begin testing, you should have a clear goal in sight. What is the reason for your testing? Are you testing for performance, functionality, usability, or compatibility? 

You can select a more effective testing strategy based on the response to this question. Understand what your target audience would expect from your website and focus on those expectations.

Step 2: Creating a Backup

Backup is a need, not a choice! Make sure you create a backup of your primary website before making any modifications to it or beginning any tests. In case of any malfunctions during the testing process, a backup will ensure that you have a restore point.

There are two ways you can create those backups. You can either do it manually or by using a WordPress plugin, which will automate the process. We will go through the instructions for both.

Manual Backup

While automated backup plugins are easy to use, manual backup techniques are more efficient if you’re troubleshooting for any specific issues. If you are an experienced WordPress developer, you may back up your site using the file manager provided by your hosting provider.

You begin by locating the root directory of your WordPress installation, which is generally named “public_html”. Select all the files and ensure you have selected “wp-config.php” as well since it contains all the configurations of your WordPress website.

Proceed to download/transfer those files to your computer. Then, after that, export your entire WordPress data by going to your WordPress hosting control panel. Look for a file named “phpMyAdmin” or “Database”. 

When you open the file, you will be presented with a list. Select your WordPress database from the list, then click on the “Export” option to download the exported database to your computer.

Once the files are on your computer, you may copy them to a USB drive. This ensures their safety on both your PC and an external device. That is all you need to do to manually back up your WordPress website.

Automated Backup (via plugin)

Look for a well-reputed and reliable backup plugin. A few examples are VaultPress Backup, BlogVault, UpdraftPlus, BackWPUp, and Duplicator. You can configure these plugins to perform automated routine backups of your WordPress site. Aside from that, you may use these plugins to manually create backups or back up particular components such as files, plugins, and databases.

After making the backup, always double-check that those backup files are working properly. So that they can be used in case the site needs to be restored.

Step 3: Clearing the Websites Cache

The cache is used to improve the surfing experience for end users, i.e., site visitors. Clearing the cache ensures that all changes made to the website during testing are properly executed. To get proper results from your testing, you must clear your site’s cache. 

You can clear them using plugins such as WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache. They make the entire procedure as simple as a single click. Or you can also manually delete the cache in your browsers. 

To manually clear your browser’s cache, click Developer Tools and navigate to the Network tab. Then choose “Disable Cache“. This will validate the test findings and keep any unexpected errors from occurring.

Step 4: Check For Any Broken Links

Another important thing to do before you begin testing is to verify that there are no faulty links on your website. Make sure that all the links are working correctly, you can use a broken link checker tool by Ahrefs. Or you can do it manually as well.

Broken links may cause unexpected errors during the testing. 

Step 5: Setting Up a WordPress Test Site

There are advantages to testing your website in different WordPress testing environments. So, it’s crucial that you understand the difference between each type of testing environment. It will assist you in choosing the best option based on the type of your tests.

Local Environment

You can set up your WordPress Test Site on a local environment, that is your computer. Any test that you carry out on it will have no influence on your live website. It is perfect for developers who are testing new features and functionality for bugs in their code.

Staging Environment

In contrast, a staging environment stores a copy of your website’s data on a server. It’s ideal for doing large version upgrades, configuration changes, and database migrations. Furthermore, if you develop websites for customers, a staging site serves as a demo site to show them how the site will look.

How To Set Up A WordPress Testing Environment

Moving on to creating a staging site. Usually, your hosting company allows you to create a staging site using a subdomain. In such a scenario, you can use any of the following FTP clients, Filezilla, Cyberduck, or Transmit. Or plugins like WP Staging, All-in-One WP Migration, or Bluehost Staging Site Plugin. 

You can build a test website using the Bluehost Staging Site Plugin on WordPress. We’ll walk you through it quickly.

Log in to your WordPress admin panel, and then navigate to “Bluehost” from the sidebar.

Now, click on the “Staging” button.

This will open a staging site wizard. Next, click on the “Create Staging Site” button

It’ll begin preparing a WordPress test site for your website. Within a few seconds, you’ll get a prompt stating that your staging environment is ready.

Now click on the “Go To Staging Site” button.

There you go, you’ll now be taken to the admin panel of your WordPress test site. A red button appears on the top of your admin panel, which indicates that it’s a staging environment.

It’s as easy as this. Now you may start testing your site without worrying about how it will affect your live website.

Step 6: Begin Your Testing

You’ve now reached the point where you can begin testing your site for anything without causing harm to your live website. 

• Begin by checking your WordPress website’s fundamental functionality to confirm that all features work properly.  

• The likelihood of any malfunctions increases exponentially when you add a new theme or a new plugin. Therefore, make sure that whenever you introduce a new plugin or theme, test your WordPress site thoroughly. 

• Run responsiveness tests across multiple devices to ensure that the layout and styling of your website are consistent with your intentions. 

• Check the site’s performance and do some loading speed tests. Based on the results, utilize caching to optimize your photos and minimize load times. 

• Try reducing your CSS and Javascript files, and you can even add a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to optimize your site further.

• Give a thorough check to your forms and navigation. A broken link will completely ruin user experience as it portrays unprofessionalism and carelessness. Nothing hurts a site’s credibility like a 404 error. Therefor,e ensure every link is working flawlessly and forms are submitted and validated without any errors.

• Security matters most to your site’s success. The server stores sensitive visitor and user data. Protecting sensitive data requires an impregnable security protocol. Any rupture might damage your reputation, finances, and legal standing. To detect site security weaknesses, do a thorough security scan. Use Wordfence, Sucuri, and Security Ninja WordPress security plugins and strong passwords.

Step 7: Conclude the Testing & Make It Live

That’s it! After you review your site’s test results and tackle all the complications, you are ready to go live. Make sure you apply those changes to your live site gradually, one by one, to avoid any unexpected errors.

Don’t rush in with the update; be strategic and organized. Start with the smaller changes while constantly monitoring your site, and then introduce the big ones. Maintaining a consistent user experience is essential, so do your best to make the whole process as smooth as possible.

Best Practices For WordPress Testing

Before we conclude, we’d like to share one last piece of important information. These are the best practices you should adopt while testing your site.

• Make a detailed testing strategy that will act as a guide for you throughout the process. It’ll easily highlight the objectives, requirements, and timeline to achieve optimal results.
• Be consistent with your testing. Do it regularly as new updates roll in all the time for different components of your site. Regular testing will keep its performance at its peak.
• See your site from a user’s perspective. It’ll help you get better insights and ultimately elevate your site’s user experience.
• Utilize both manual and automated testing methods. Carefully gauge what task fits either of these methods. You can use automated methods for repetitive testing and manual methods or usability aspects.
• Again, good security is paramount. So make sure you regularly scan your site for any vulnerabilities. 

Too Complicated For You?

The internet keeps changing by the second, hence, WordPress. They constantly introduce new features and fix bugs by dropping in frequent updates. On the other hand, to keep up with this, all the third-party plugins and themes that you may use also constantly update themselves. It can be a daunting experience to keep track of all of this and maintain your site accordingly from time to time. 

Don’t want to deal with all of this? No worries. We are here to keep your site as optimized as it was on day one. We at LDNinjas offer ongoing maintenance and testing services. We will make sure that your site runs smoothly, is secure, and loads fast.
Even if you need SEO improvements, performance optimization, custom plugins or updates, or security monitoring, our vetted experts can handle it all. Contact us, and we’ll see to it that your site is always up-to-date so you can concentrate on expanding your business.