Testing Websites for Academic Web Hosting

Periodically maintenance changes occur to the Cornell Academic Web Hosting service which requires the re-testing of websites.

No Longer Need Your Website?

If you no longer need a website, or no longer need access to a website, contact acadtech@cornell.edu. 

How to Test

You can test your website(s) by going to the website address.  

If an alternate “test” URL has been setup for your website, site owners will be informed via email. Otherwise, use your regular website address. 

What to Test

• Verify that your entire site works as it should.
• Verify that it has all the site content that you expect.
• Make sure your navigation works.
• If your website requires authentication to access all or part of the website (either a shared password, or login by Cornell netID), verify that is working correctly.
  • Make sure you are prompted to authenticate.
  • Confirm that you can successfully access secured parts of your site.
  • Confirm that you are denied access when you do not authenticate (or authenticate incorrectly).
• If your site uses a MySQL database, make sure that it is reading & updating data from the database correctly.
  • If it displays data dynamically read from the database, verify that is working.
  • If you write data into the database, verify that is working.

• If your site sends emails, for example as contacts or confirmations, test your email functionality.

• Test changing a file on your website. Verify that you can successfully log in and upload a change to your website.
  • Forgot your password? See instructions to Reset Your Password.
  • There are new addresses for uploading files. See Instructions to Upload Files.
• Test all links (throughout the navigation, footer, sidebars, and body) to ensure they go to the correct page.
• Make sure all videos play correctly.
• Test any downloads.
• Cross-browser testing (Google Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Microsoft Edge).

Troubleshooting

If something on your website is broken or incorrect, contact acadtech@cornell.edu.

• In general, website content maintenance is the responsibility of the site owner and site maintainers.
• If the problem is related to site access, file permissions, site content synchronization, or authentication, we may be able to fix it for you.