How to navigate the old CMS Plugin

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The Siteimprove CMS plugin is a small overlay box, that, after installation, will appear in your CMS platform and inform you about the issues related to the site/page that you are working on. This article describes how to navigate the Siteimprove CMS Plugin.

Note: Data shown in the Siteimprove CMS Plugin depends on the Siteimprove services that you are subscribed to or that users have access to.

The Standard CMS plugin works as a small version of the Siteimprove Intelligence Platform (SIP).  It will only show information about pages that are available in the platform. If the site is not available in the platform you will not be able to see data in the plugin or configure the plugin correctly. 

User permissions in the Siteimprove platform are also reflected in the plugin. Users need to sign into the plugin.

The Standard CMS plugin does not provide information about unpublished pages, however, once a page is published you can use the CMS plugin to check them. For CMS plugins for particular CMS systems, a Prepublish feature is available allowing you to check content prior to being published. This feature requires a subscription and additional setup. Read more in the article - What is Prepublish?

The following text describes the features available via the plugin:

• CMS plugin overlay
• My history tab
• Site overview tab
• CMS Plugin ‘This Page’ details
  • Page Content Issues
  • Page Analytics
  • Traffic data providers
  • SEO Page details
• Re-check page
• See unpublish impact
• Prepublish Check

CMS plugin overlay

Once the CMS Plugin is configured, an overlay tab appears within your CMS. This tab will display the number of issues when on an editing page in the CMS. The issues number presented is the total number of ‘Errors (not ‘Warnings, Review items, or Potential issues) found under Page Content Issues (Quality Assurance, Policy, and Accessibility) and SEO. 

If you click on the icon with three dots on the overlay you can expand the overlay tab. 

When this tab is expanded you are presented with information about the site under the "Site overview tab". The My History tab shows information about the previous checks. 

If you are on a content editing page within the CMS, issues, and information specific to the page are also presented under the "This Page" tab.

My history tab

This section lists 10 pages you have checked recently using the plugin. It displays the total number of Errors (not Warnings, Review items, or Potential issues) under the Page Content Issues (Quality Assurance, Policy, and Accessibility) and SEO. Analytics is not included in the information shown here.  

If the Prepublish feature is configured, this tab also displays the last completed Prepublish check.

Note: Refreshing the page will clear the Prepublish check history.

Site overview tab

The Site Overview shows general information about your site including:

• Site last crawled information
• DCI® Score
• Quality Assurance issues
• Accessibility issues
• SEO issues
• Policy matches
• Overall Analytics information (if available) 
• Overall Readability score (if available)

You can expand and collapse some of the different data components listed. To collapse components select the minus (-) sign next to the component. If components are collapsed, you should be able to find and select the plus (+) sign to expand them under the "Collapsed components" area.

CMS Plugin ‘This Page’ details

The CMS Plugin ‘This Page’ tab details are divided into 3 sections via a drop-down: 

• Page Content Issues
• Page Analytics
• SEO

Page Content Issues

The page content issues tab displays content issues. If you select the issue, another browser tab will open up to either the corresponding issue in the page report or the corresponding area in the Siteimprove Platform so you can investigate further. 

 The Page Content Issues section shows data relating to the following:

• Page Last Checked Data
• DCI Page Score
• Quality Assurance
• Misspellings
• Broken links
• Readability levels
• Accessibility
• Accessibility issues (A, AA, AAA, WAI-ARIA authoring practices, and Accessibility best practices conformance levels)
• Policy
  • Content policies that are marked as a high priority, CMS plugin, and enabled for all sites within the Siteimprove platform. If there are no policies configured in this way, then the policy issues will not be displayed in the plugin.

You can expand and collapse some data components. To collapse components select the minus (-) sign next to the component.  If components are collapsed, you should be able to find and select the plus (+) sign to expand them under the "Collapsed components" area.

Page Analytics

The Page Analytics area shows Analytics (or Traffic) data if Analytics is included in your subscription. 

The Analytics section shows data relating to the following:

• Behavior Overview
  • Page visits
  • Page views
  • Time spent on page
• Internal traffic (referring pages and next pages)
• Feedback rating and comments

It's possible to filter the data by time period. To view more information within the Siteimprove platform, click on a section or link. 

You can expand and collapse the different data components. To collapse components select the minus (-) sign next to the component.  If components are collapsed, you should be able to find and select the plus (+) sign to expand them under the ‘Collapsed components’ area.

Traffic data providers

It is possible to show Traffic data from third-party analytics providers.
So if you are not using Siteimprove Analytics, users can instead see Traffic Analytics data from:

• Adobe Analytics: See "Siteimprove Adobe Analytics integration guide".
• Google Analytics: See "How to enable Google Traffic Analytics data integration".

Page view data and graphs for the last 30 days can be seen in the CMS plugin.
This helps you make informed, data-driven decisions based on a page’s popularity.

Traffic Data under ‘Site Overview’

If you have the Analytics traffic data integration setup for the site the Site Overview tab in the CMS plugin shows behavior data that comes from the Traffic data provider. 

Traffic Data under ‘This Page’

If you have the Traffic Analytics data integration setup for the site then you can see traffic analytics data for the page you are viewing in CMS under the "This page" tab in the plugin under the Page Analytics area. 

Traffic Data Integrations Configuration

Traffic provider integration can be configured in the Siteimprove platform at Integrations > Integrations Overview > Traffic data providers. See more on this in the corresponding integrations guides below:

• Adobe Analytics: See "Siteimprove Adobe Analytics integration guide".
• Google Analytics: See "How to enable Google Traffic Analytics data integration".

SEO Page details

The SEO page details will display SEO data if you have a subscription and access to the SEO section in the Siteimprove Platform. 

The SEO section gives details on the following:

• Page Last Checked Data
• SEO Score
• SEO Technical issues
• SEO Content issues
• SEO User Experience issues
• SEO Search snippet preview
• SEO Keywords related to this page
• SEO Competing content

If you click on issues under the SEO section, another browser tab will open to the overall SEO issue page in the Siteimprove platform. It doesn’t open to the specific page report directly for the issue as many SEO issues are overall sitewide issues or may not be highlightable on the page report. 

You can expand and collapse some of the different data components listed. To collapse components select the minus (-) sign next to the component.  If components are collapsed, you should be able to find and select the plus (+) sign to expand them under the "Collapsed components" area.

Re-check page

This option is available when on a content editing page in your CMS system which gives you the possibility to re-check/re-crawl the page. When pages are re-checked, results will be returned immediately.

Some plugins also are set up to automatically re-check pages and directories when they are published. 

Note: When re-check is used, a single page check is performed and the page is added to the "Single page check" area in the platform (Quality Assurance > Summary > Single page check). 

These “Single page checks” will remain in the “Single page check” area unless they are removed in line with the Clean-up process for Single Page Checks.

See unpublish impact

The "See unpublish impact" section shows data relating to a page if you were to unpublish that page. Please note, it does not un-publish any page, it provides information regarding impacted areas in Quality Assurance, Ads, and SEO, that you should be aware of before unpublishing.

This area is separated into areas of “Main impact” and “Potential impact.” The “Main impact” area shows issues that impact your page the most should it be unpublished. “Potential impact” shows other issues relating to the unpublishing of the page. 

The following data is displayed under this area of the plugin:

• Data on when the page was added to Siteimprove
• Referring Tags
• Quality Assurance: External or internal links that refer to the page.
• SEO: Effect on pages included in Search engine optimization (SEO).
• Ads: Information on Landing Page Optimization checks, is provided by the Ads module if subscribed.
• Shortened URL: See if unpublishing a page will have an impact on short URLs linked to the page (if you have the URL shortener integration setup)

For example, you'll be informed about external or internal links that refer to the page or informed if the page is part of ongoing search engine optimization (SEO) work conducted via the Siteimprove SEO Advanced module.

Prepublish Check

For some of the plugins, there is a Prepublish feature available where you can check content prior to being published. This feature requires a subscription and additional setup. You can read more about this and how to utilize the feature in the article - What is Prepublish?