Chance to Shine

Overview

We were approached by Chance to Shine to test their new WordPress website just before its launch to the world. Predominantly a content-based site, there was also a payment integration with Stripe that also required thorough testing.

The Challenge

Chance to Shine were having a new website being developed by an external development agency and they needed it to be tested by an independent testing company.

The site was being built in WordPress and would incorporate a payment system for making donations.

The tricky part was there needed to be a fast turnaround in the testing from the point that the development work was complete, the content had mostly been added by Chance to Shine staff members and the expected launch date. There is coordination needed so that we're ready to start the testing once developers and content team have completed their parts.

When the turnaround time is short, there are two main aspects to consider. The first is how much time is needed for the testing and the second is how much time is needed to deal with what comes out of the testing.

The second part is always a bit of an unknown and, if there are a lot of bugs found that need to be fixed prior to launch then it could push the launch date back.

With that hanging over us a little bit we were ready for the testing to begin.

Testing a WordPress Site

This particular project for Chance to Shine involved testing a WordPress site. We test a large number of sites built on WordPress, probably numbering over 100 WordPress sites tested to date.

With WordPress we're testing a number of different aspects, usually including the following:

• Front end pages - usually we test against designs to make sure what has been built is correct.
• WordPress Admin - we test that content blocks and any custom post types are working correctly, so when the client enters their content everything is working as expected.
• Browser & mobile compatibility - we test that the front end pages display and work correctly across the major desktop browsers and mobile devices. Mobile is always a source of more bugs.
• Accessibility - we check the site against accessibility guidelines and raise any accessibility problems we find.
• Technical - there are a number of technical tests that we do in order to make sure the WordPress site is in a good place to launch.
• Performance - we'll make sure that pages are loading quickly and raise bugs for any performance related issues.
• Payment testing - if the WordPress site has a payment integration, as this one did, we carry out a range of test transactions using different devices and payment methods.

Solution

Inevitably, the development work ran slightly late and the Chance to Shine team worked like the clappers to get the bulk of the content in so we could start testing.

Once we got underway, the team descended on the site and swiftly started to rack up the issues found. Due to the short timescales, we had 3 team members testing at the same time, covering different desktop browsers and mobile devices and different testing tasks.

This shortened the testing period to give adequate time for handling the bugs we were raising whilst also making sure we covered everything needed between the 3 team members.

Overall we tested the site across 12 different desktop browsers and mobile devices, to ensure a good coverage consistent with the expected usage of the site.

We saved an adequate portion of time for the payment part, which was left until the end due to the Stripe account and implementation not being ready. Many test donation transactions were completed across different devices and payment methods.

Chance to Shine were also the first beta user of our Sites Beta, which provides an automated audit of the site and the ability to easily run accessibility tests. This was so that further accessibility tests could be run after content changes and bug fixes had been completed.

Results

Chance to Shine were using our Issues bug tracker, part of Testing Manager, for this testing and in total we raised 110 bugs. Many of the issues raised were classed as minor and trivial severity, a minor issue may not have a huge impact on its own but will have a much bigger impact if all 110 are present at launch.

The site launched successfully and, as sometimes happens, some last minute development changes meant that when we carried out our post launch checks, there were a small number of new urgent bugs to be reported.

A few weeks after launch we also completed a real donation payment as Chance to Shine was selected as our charity of the month, it passed with flying colours.

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