Ratify

A plugin that helps keep us from publishing sites with basic configuration errors. It is an automated checklist of common issues in WordPress sites.

Ratify – Your technical seal of approval

This small and unintrusive plugin provides a fast way to spot technical WordPress configuration issues and fixes some of them without being asked. Examples include:

• verifying that the home page has a valid Title tag
• verifying that the site is not blocking robots (Google)
• verifying that the site and all assets are being delivered over HTTPS
• verifying that the home page is delivered gzipped (compressed)
• verifying that images on the home page have ALT attributes
  • that the home page has H1, H2, H3, etc. tags
  • that the HTML on the home page is valid
  • that the HTML on the home page has Open Graph tags
• much, much more

In most cases the plugin can improve your Google Lighthouse score simply by installing it.

The story of Ratify

Why?

When you create more than 1 site per week (as we have at Secret Source Technology) using a different premium theme on each site, there are dozens or even hundreds of issues that can arise.

The Ratify plugin is our latest attempt at formalizing our quality control. It is our guarantee that a site meets a certain minimum of quality. It greatly reduces the potential for human error and allows you to see at a glance issues the site may be having.

This plugin:

• Started as a spreadsheet with nearly one hundred line items
• Turned into a bash script
• Then a bash script with a graphic web front end
• Then into Selenium automated test script (for testing forms)
• Then into a plugin using the Herbert framework
• Then into a plugin using the WordPress Plugin Boilerplate (current version)

The plugin structure is very basic and tests can be added simply (if you know how to write object oriented PHP – have a look in the “Models” folder…). In future versions we hope to include additional tests and speed improvements for your site. We are very interested in hearing from users of the plugin so please do not hesitate to contact us with questions / concerns.

Installation

There are no special requirements to install this plugin. Just use the standard WordPress plugin installation routine.

Frequently Asked Questions

(waiting for feedback from users… there are no FAQs at this time)

Screenshots

1. This is a sample report from a site that is not very good

Copyright

The “approved” stamp used with permission.

Contributing

We’re following this gist to use github as the master repository.

If you find an issues with this plugin, please submit tickets using github’s issue tracking system.
Be sure to state what the problem is, the steps to reproduce, the expected behavior and the actual behavior.

Helpful Links for Developers

• https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/63668/autoloading-namespaces-in-wordpress-plugins-themes-can-it-work
• https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/307345/translate-a-constant-while-appeasing-wordpress-phpcs

Changelog

1.1.1 – Fixed an issue in which valid headings were failing the headings test
1.1 – Completely PHPCS valid following all WordPress coding style guidelines.
1.0.4 – Fixed file names to be PHPCS compliant. Also fixed other phpcs compliance issues throughout
1.0.3 – Moved the master repository to github
1.0.2 – Fixed some readme formatting
1.0.1 – Fixed formatting in readme and made it pretty and tweaked the test for Google Analytics (in the prior version)
1.0 – Initial release