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CMS Plugin: Frequently Asked Questions

Modified on: Wed, 9 Jul, 2025 at 11:55 PM

Pre-installation 

Where can I find the CMS plugins?

You can access information about downloading, installing, configuring, and utilizing the CMS plugins by selecting the specific plugin on the CMS Plugin page. Additionally, details about the installable plugins can be found under Settings > Integrations > Integrations Overview within the Siteimprove platform.

What CMSs does the Siteimprove CMS Plugin support?

Details on which Content Management Systems (CMS) the Siteimprove plugin is available for can be found on the CMS Plugin page. Generally, if the CMS is listed there, it is supported. If not, it likely is not. If the plugin is not supported, you can submit a feedback request to the product team to request that it be added.

What does the CMS Plugin Offer?

What does the Siteimprove CMS Plugin offer?

Are there security risks with the CMS plugin?

The CMS plugin has the same high level of security as the Siteimprove Intelligence Platform itself. Learn more about CMS plugin security in this article, CSM Plugin: Security FAQ.

Would the plugin interfere with or slow down the performance of our CMS?

The plugin has been designed to process data on the Siteimprove servers. This means that the plugin should not cause any issues with performance on a customer's CMS.

Does the CMS plugin come with any additional cost?

No, the standard CMS plugin offering, without the Prepublish (Content Check) feature, is free for everyone to download and install. To use the plugin, you need to have a Siteimprove account. If you do not have a Siteimprove account, you will not be able to log in, and it will prevent you from using the plugin even though it is installed. The Prepublish feature requires a subscription to Prepublish. For more information about the Prepublish feature, visit Prepublish content check: How to ensure quality content on your site.

What is the difference between CMS Deeplink and Siteimprove CMS Plugin?

Installation and Configuration

How long does installation generally take for the plugin?

Depending on confidence levels, the installation itself should take no more than 10 minutes.

However, for larger organizations, it’s not uncommon for the CMS Administrator to sit outside of the core team, and the lead times in acquiring this resource to support plugin installation may vary from organization to organization. In addition, the installation of a plugin may trigger internal processes, such as approval, testing, or deployment processes, so the timeline for this is dependent on the organization and its requirements. 

Most plugins also need to be configured after installation, which can also take time. 

How long does the configuration of the plugin generally take?

This depends on a few things: 

  1. The CMS plugin, as some CMS plugins have more configuration options than others. For example, the AEM plugin has many configuration options to accommodate several customization options, and others, like the WordPress plugin, don't have as many configuration options.
  2. The degree of customizations made to the CMS environment outside of a standard vanilla setup of the CMS environment. The plugins are optimized for the standard vanilla instance of the CMS environment, so the greater the amount of customizations made to the environment, the more complex the necessary configurations may become, or the greater the likelihood of encountering issues with configuration.  
  3. The level of expertise the resource configuring the plugin has with both the CMS environment and the Siteimprove platform. We generally recommend that the resource working to install and configure the plugin has at least basic training with the Siteimprove platform and has both expertise with and admin-level access to the CMS environment.
  4. The need to test the plugin before deployment to a production site. Testing the plugin is recommended on a non-production environment that closely resembles your production environment, but it can take time depending on the organization's requirements for testing. Please follow the steps here: How to test the Siteimprove CMS Plugins for requirements and steps to test the plugin.

Generally, the more complicated the setup of the CMS environment, the less expertise that the resource configuring the plugin has with the CMS environment and the Siteimprove platform, the more time it will take to configure the plugin. 

How do I test the CMS plugin?

We recommend testing the plugin on a non-production environment that closely resembles your production environment, for which the published pages can be scanned by the Siteimprove platform (if the published pages are behind firewalls, the IPs and user agents used by the crawler can typically be allowed so the site can be crawled). Please follow the steps here: How to test the Siteimprove CMS Plugins for requirements and steps to test the plugin. Note: The plugin cannot be tested on a local environment (i.e., local to your machine only) for which the live published version of the pages cannot be crawled.

What steps are needed for the implementation of the CMS plugin?

Please review How to install the CMS Plugin.

If a Siteimprove user has a customized user role and permissions in the platform, will these criteria be replicated in the plugin?

Yes, they will see the same information in the plugin as they are seeing in the platform. Any changes to users' roles would need to be amended in the platform. This is the same for all plugins.

Who can see and utilize the CMS plugin?

Anyone who has a Siteimprove login can utilize the plugin. If a user does not have access to certain things in Siteimprove, those permission settings will carry over to the plugin.

Can I configure the user's access to the plugin itself within the CMS?

For some of the plugins, such as Drupal, AEM, Optimizely, and Sitecore, you can assign access to CMS users in the configuration, giving them visibility of the plugin itself. Other CMS may vary. Please refer to the installation guides for the particular plugins for more details on user management capabilities. They can be found either by searching this knowledge base for guides or via links under the CMS Plugin pages to the particular plugins.
Permission for the modules, such as Accessibility, is then managed via the Siteimprove platform’s user roles and permissions.

Can the plugin be applied to just certain directories, or is it visible for all pages of the site?

It depends on the plugin. Some, like WordPress, only have the option to display for the entire site, and others, like AEM or Sitecore, the CMS plugin can be applied to specific directories. Please refer to the installation guides for the particular plugins for more details on this. They can be found either by searching this knowledge base for guides or via links under the CMS Plugin pages to the particular plugins. 

Using the CMS Plugin

How do I navigate the Siteimprove CMS Plugin?

It depends on whether you are using the "Old plugin experience" or the "New plugin experience." To figure out if you are using the 'old' or 'new' plugin experience, reference the next question and answer: How do I tell if I am using the 'old' or 'new' plugin user experience (UI/UX)?

How do I tell if I am using the 'old' or 'new' plugin user experience (UI/UX)?

Old plugin Experience

With the "old plugin experience," there will be "This page, Site Overview, and My history" tabs, and the plugin overlay will look like the screenshot below.

New plugin experience

For the "new plugin experience," there will be "Live page, Prepublish view, and Unpublish risks" tabs, and the plugin overlay will look something like the screenshot below.
 

What happens if I publish a new page to my site? Will the plugin automatically check that page?

That depends on the plugin and how your CMS Platform is set up. Some plugins will check pages in the Siteimprove platform automatically when the pages are published. 

For the plugins that have this feature, when a new page is published, it will trigger a Single Page Check of that page and reload when the page has finished crawling. 

For CMS plugins that don't check pages in the Siteimprove platform when they are published, you could either choose to wait to see the live published page data in the plugin with the next scheduled full site crawl, or you can run a Single Page Check of the page in the Siteimprove platform once the page is published. 

If a page is not published, the page cannot be checked unless you use the Prepublish (Content Check) functionality, which requires a subscription to Prepublish and additional setup. 

Can I check the content before it's published?

This is possible with select plugins that have the Prepublish (Content Check) functionality and with a subscription to the Prepublish feature. For Prepublish checks, we perform a subset of the checks. For more information, see: Prepublish content check: How to ensure quality content on your site.

Does the Siteimprove DCI® scoring only work on published content?

Yes, DCI@ scoring only works on published content that has been crawled in the Siteimprove platform, which can be seen under the "This page" or "Live page" area of the plugins. For the Prepublish check, which is available for certain plugins mentioned in the Prepublish check article with a subscription to Prepublish, we only perform some of these checks, and the DCI@ scoring doesn't apply as the content may not yet be published or checked in the Siteimprove platform.  

For more details about the specific checks performed with the Prepublish check for the plugins, reference Prepublish content check: How to ensure quality content on your site, and the installation guides for each particular plugin.

Does the plugin automatically take into account the Accessibility Site Target settings? 

No, it does not at this time. By default, all issues and levels of issues under Accessibility, SEO, Policy, etc will show within the plugin initially unless a user doesn't have access to certain areas of issues within the Siteimprove platform under their user role. For example, if a user doesn't have access to Accessibility in the Siteimprove platform, then Accessibility issues will not appear in the plugin. 

There are options to adjust settings or filtering to only display certain levels of issues and even certain areas of the platform within the plugin, so you can replicate the Site Target levels under the "Live Page" or "This page" areas of the plugin. Unfortunately, these adjustments aren't available yet for Prepublish checks, but it may be down the road. These adjustments need to be made by each user and cannot be adjusted overall for all users of the plugin or a subset of them at this point. For the "old plugin experience," the options for this are under the Settings area. For the "new plugin experience," there is an option to filter the data under the "List view" type, which you can get to by selecting the "view all issue types" link.  

Can a user create a policy from the plugin?

No, policies need to be created in the Siteimprove platform. 

For Content policies to display in the CMS plugin, they need to be marked in the Siteimprove platform as:

  1. Enabled for all sites under the account 
  2. Shared 
  3. CMS plugin 

Note: Media and Document Policies are not supported at this time, and the ‘High priority’ designation is no longer required for policies to appear in the CMS plugin’s Prepublish and "Live page" or "This page" views.

Can a user make decisions on issues in the plugin?

No. The plugin is read-only. All decisions on issues would need to be made within the Siteimprove platform and cannot be made within the plugin.  

Troubleshooting Issues

Who do I contact for troubleshooting support for the CMS plugins?

Plugins have different support providers; details of this are highlighted on our CMS Plugin page of the website, as not all plugins were developed by Siteimprove. Plugins can be developed by anyone who has the expertise to do so by following the CMS Plugin Cookbook. 

For Siteimprove Premium and Siteimprove-provider plugins, which are supported by Siteimprove, you can contact Siteimprove Technical Support. For the Vendor-provider and Community plugins, which are developed and supported by third-party companies/communities, you can find more details regarding who to contact on each individual plugin page, which can be found via links on the CMS Plugin page of the website.

Why can't I see my Siteimprove CMS Plugin?

Why can't I see my Siteimprove CMS Plugin?

Why am I seeing an error message in the plugin?

CMS Plugin: Why am I getting the error message "Missing access to page"?


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