Scrutiny 12 Full and Summary Reports
Customisable, presentable reports
If you are testing a website for a customer or others within your organisation, Scrutiny can generate a report which contains a summary, and optionally various tables.
Ways to generate a report
Version 12 has a 'Summary' tab which is populated with the summary report at the end of the scan. From there you can use the 'Export' button (top-right of that tab) to choose the report type (full or summary) and the format (PDF or HTML) that you want to export.
Alternatively you can have a report saved at the end of a scheduled scan or a scan with actions. To switch on this option, go to Sites and Settings for your site, > Finish actions tab > Save report. There you can also choose the type and format of the report, and which files are included. You can also set the Save location there. If you haven't set a save location, then the report won't automatically be saved at the end of the scan.
Note that the 'Finish actions' tab contains options relating to the full report, which are observed whenever exporting a full report.
The full report can include:
- XML Sitemap - saved as sitemap.xml
- All links - you can specify in Preferences whether the 'by link' or 'all links' table is saved. The latter may be extremely large if the site is large, so 'by link' is recommended.
- Bad links
- Short Summary - this may be of use if you're making a custom-formatted report using the information here. It's the same summary of SEO issues that's included on the summary report but in csv form.
- HTML validation, accessibility and other warnings
- full SEO table - this is the most useful 'supertable' of all of your pages. Columns can be included or excluded using the 'Columns' button to the top-left of the SEO table.
- Individual SEO tests of concern - this may include pages with possible duplicates, pages with possible duplicate titles, pages with possible duplicate meta descriptions, pages with many links, pages with short or long meta description, pages with long title, pages that have a keyword appearing many times in relation to the number of words on the page, pages with thin content, pages with deep content (more than 6 clicks away from home), images without alt text and insecure or mixed content. The thresholds for these things are arbitrary - google has never published its own criteria for these things, but sometimes gives a general idea. You can set your own thresholds for many of these things in Preferences > SEO
- Spelling by word - if the spellcheck is switched on
Note that even with 'save report' switched on, Scrutiny won't save a report for this site unless you set a Save location.
Web-enabling the report
You can give anyone web access to the report by checking Preferences > Report > Include web access. This will cause two php files (index.php and displaycsv.php) to be saved along with the rest of the files belonging to this report. Move all files including their enclosing folder to a web server and view in a browser using the full address of the folder, for example: https://peacockmedia.software/online/reports/example-full-report-SEO-20190421125847/. (The enclosing folder can of course be renamed to make this a little more elegant.)
The web server needs to be able to run php files in the location that you put them. It shouldn't be necessary to make those files executable. Some configuration may be necessary to make the 'view' and 'download' links work as expected, but as that will vary from server to server, that's outside the scope of this document.
With the web access option switched on, and HTML format selected, the report will be generated as before. With the PDF option selected, both summary.html and summary.pdf will be generated.