Insights

Insights is a module for an Modern Campus CMS site that provides reports on search engine optimization (SEO) strength, accessibility compliance, spelling, and links. See overall scores and per-page breakdowns for each type of issue. Insights scans live website pages, including those not managed by Modern Campus CMS, though these pages won't be editable in Modern Campus CMS.

As a level 9 or 10 administrator, you can always access the Insights module directly from the Reports menu. If you're a lower-level user, administrators grant you access by going to Setup > Groups. You can share Insights reports with other users who have access.

Configuring InsightsLink to this section

After purchasing the Insights module, turn it on for the site(s) to scan, as follows:

1. Navigate to Setup > Sites.
2. Click the site name.
3. Navigate to Optional Features.
4. Select the Insights checkbox.
5. Click Configure to set up the following:
   • Frequency: Select a radio button for how often you want Insights to scan your site.
   • Run Every:
     • For frequency Daily or Weekly, type a number to specify the interval at which you want Insights to scan.
     • For Monthly, specify a day of the month for the scan to run.
       • If you use a day of the month higher than the number of days in a specific month, (for example, 31), then the scan defaults to running on the last day of that month.
   • Access Group: Set up a new group, that will have access to Insights and receive an email report from Insights.
     
     • Users levels 9 and 10 have access to Insights regardless of this setting, but won't receive the email reports if they're not part of the access group.
   • Directory Index:Type to tell Insights what your index pages are called (for example, index.html, index.php, default.aspx).
     • Add multiple comma-separated values in the field to allow for multiple directory index values.
       • Insights looks for pages in the order the values are written.
         • For example, if index.html,index.php is entered, Insights first searches for files ending in index.html, and if it doesn't find index.html in a given directory, it then searches for index.php.
     • This setting tells Insights what to add to a URL that ends with a /, such as https://gallena.edu/academics/. When browsers request these links, the server returns a page based on the directory index configuration (for example, https://gallena.edu/academics/index.html).
6. In the Insights Configuration box, click Save.
7. In Setup > Sites, click Save.

Insights scans all sites between 7 p.m. and 2 a.m. PT, so if you have just configured your module you won't see any results until after that time. It scans first that night, and then runs on the interval you have specified. This first scan is the most intensive, as it must fully index your entire site, and takes from hours up to a day to run.

If you are a self-hosted customer, you may need to open additional ports on your server to allow Insights to make outbound connections. Please coordinate with Modern Campus staff or contact the help desk for more information.

Inclusions and ExclusionsLink to this section

Insights automatically scans every page on the production (not staging) server managed by Modern Campus CMS. In addition, an optional file named insights.txt can be generated on the production server at the top level of the site. This file serves to supplement the list of scanned pages with other URLs that you may want included or excluded from the scan. Exclusions will always take precedence if a URL or filename is both included and excluded.

Include URLs

You can include any page that returns a valid response from the server (for example an HTTP Status Code of 200).

To add more pages to the list,

1. Open and edit insights.txt to add the full URL of each page that needs to be scanned.
2. Save and publish the file.

When Insights runs its next scan, the new files should appear in the reports. Do not rename or move insights.txt, as Insights won't find the list of pages to scan..

Exclude URLs, Files, and Folders

In addition, you can add URLs, files, and folders to insights.txt to exclude them from the scan. When a page or folder is excluded, it isn't scanned by Insights even if other pages link to it.

To indicate an exclusion, add a "-" before it. You can, but don't need to, use the full URL. Examples of several ways to add exclusions, as follows:

Insights automatically excludes the following text-based file extensions:

.ashx
.cs
.css
.csv
.ics
.inc
.js
.json

.jsx

.md

.ounav

.php3

.ps

.smil

.ssi

.tcf

.tmpl
.ts
.tsx
.txt
.xml

.xsl

.xslt

.vue

Example

Below is a sample of what insights.txt might contain in the fictional Gallena University:

-https://gallena.edu/_resources/
-https://gallena.edu/_archive/
-https://gallena.edu/biology/internal.html
-https://gallena.edu/english/internal.html
https://cfa-gallena.edu/calendar.html
https://cfa-gallena.edu/contributors.html

The above entries result in the following:

• Because Insights is installed in gallena.edu, all pages under that domain are scanned with the exception of those in the _resources and _archive folder.
• In addition, the internal.html pages in the biology and English folders are not scanned.
• The specified pages on the external domain cfa-gallena.edu are also scanned.

Include comments by prefacing them with # or //. These lines will be ignored.

ReportingLink to this section

Insights scans your site according to four metrics: SEO, Accessibility, Links, and Spelling. Administrators and users in the access group can also view reports on individual pages that combine these aspects. The higher the number, the better the score.

Go to Reports > Insights to see the Site Summary report. This section shows consolidated information for the site, including an overall site score and section scores for the four main sections of Insights: SEO, Accessibility, Links, and Spelling. You can see the sitemap.xml and robots.txt files from this view, and navigate to the individual reports.

Every time Insights scans the site (the frequency of which can be configured in Setup > Sites), an email is sent out to the users who belong to the Insights access group (Setup > Groups). This email gives a basic summary of the site score information that is found on the Site Summary report. If Insights fails to run a scan, an error email will be sent to the Insights group determining the cause of failure (such as "no insights.txt file found").

You can share reports, whether the site summary, section reports, or page reports, using Modern Campus CMS messages. Share a report by clicking the Share Report link. Type to choose a user, and if necessary, edit the subject and message.

When a report is shared with another user with access to Insights, the message contains basic information about the report and a link for the user to view the report within Insights. Messages can be sent to an individual user, multiple users, or a defined group of users in the system (such as "Administrators Only").

You can see a detailed breakdown of how Insights scores are calculated (Help Desk login required).

Site Score

Click the Site Score for an average of the four section scores found inside Insights; those sub-scores are calculated using a weighted calculation (Help Desk login required) based off of the number of issues that Insights has identified across the site. 

In the Site Summary menu, click the name of each section for the full results of that report, for example, opening the Spelling report shows all misspelled words in the site. The results also indicate which pages need to be edited to solve the issues.

Section Scores

In the summary of each section, click the name of an issue to view the details. Click to edit the page or view the full page report (see the section below). Pages not managed in the site being scanned, and pages that were last published before Insights was installed, won't have the Edit Page link.

Because Insights scans the page on your live website, it may turn up errors that do not actually appear on the corresponding page in Modern Campus CMS, but instead on an include or other file that is incorporated into the page content on publish.  For example, if Insights shows a broken link on every single page in your site, it's extremely likely that broken link is in the site header or footer. To fix errors like this, you have to modify the include or other file, not the page. 

Once you fix an error, the reports won't reflect that change until the next time Insights scans your site.

SEO

SEO, or search engine optimization, has four subsections: Titles, Descriptions, Heading Tags, and Keywords.

Titles

Underneath Titles, there are four reports. Each report at the top shows the total number of all titles that fit the report criteria as well as the number of pages affected across the site. Each title is listed with affected pages grouped underneath.

• Duplicate Titles: All pages that have the same title as one or more other pages in the site.
• Missing Titles: All pages that don't have a title.
• Long Titles: All pages with titles longer than seventy characters, with the exact character count of each title and the offending characters highlighted in red. By general web standards, 70 characters is considered the upper limit for the full page title to be visible in a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). 
• Short Titles: All pages with titles shorter than ten characters, with the exact character count of each title. Short titles potentially deprive people using search engines of useful information. 

Descriptions

Underneath Descriptions, there are four reports. Each report lists the total number of descriptions that fit the criteria and the number of pages affected across the site:

• Duplicate Descriptions: All pages that have the same description as one or more other pages in the site, grouping pages by the shared description.
• Missing Descriptions: All pages that don't have a description. Page descriptions are important for gaining user click-throughs from a SERP.
• Long Descriptions: All pages with descriptions longer than 160 pages. The offending description is shown in full with all characters exceeding 160 highlighted in red. Descriptions longer than this may not be fully displayed in a standard SERP.
• Short Descriptions: All pages with descriptions shorter than seventy characters. Short descriptions potentially deprive people using the search engine of useful information.

Heading Tags

There are two reports in the Heading Tags section. They both relate to the hierarchy of heading tags (for example, <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc.) that are in the source code of the page. Each report lists the total number of affected pages at the top, as well as the individual results.

• Duplicate H1 Headings: All pages that have the same content wrapped inside an <h1> tag as one or more other pages on the site, grouped by shared header. It is not considered a best practice to have multiple pages in the site with the same content wrapped in an <h1> tag.
• Missing H1 Headings: All pages that don't have any <h1> tags.

Keywords

Keywords lists all keywords found in the site. This report doesn't show pages in the results, just the number of times each word is used. Keyword for pages are edited under page parameters.

Accessibility

Review pages based on the accessibility standard set in account settings. In the reports, each issue is listed along with a link to the page(s) that contain that issue.

See the specific issue with a link to the repair for that issue and links to the offending pages. Click the link to each page for editing, as well as a link to each page's Page Report within Insights. Click the issue name to see more detailed information about the issue, including how to repair the issue.

If you have accessibility check exceptions, the excepted issues won't appear in the report. Click exceptions to see and manage exceptions.

Links

The Links section shows all broken links found in the site and active exceptions (Insights link check will automatically ignore links beginning with "tel:" or "mailto:"). Click to view and edit the page or view the full page report.

Broken links discovered during the Insights scan return errors as standard HTTP status codes. To troubleshoot the errors reported by Insights, see the following table.

Spelling

The Spelling section contains the Misspelled Words Report, which lists all the misspelled words found across the site. Click to view and edit the page or view the full page report.

Click +Add to Dictionary to add words to the custom dictionary When a word has been successfully added, the "Add to Dictionary" link will be replaced with a checkmark icon and the word "Added."

Page Reports

Page Reports runs detailed reports on a single page, listing all issues found in that page, as follows:

1. In the Site Summary menu, click Page Reports.
2. Click a folder name to open it and see the files inside.
3. Click a page name to view the report for it.
4. If the page is managed in Modern Campus CMS, click Edit Page to directly edit the page.
5. Click the SEO, Accessibility, Links, and Spelling tabs to see results for the page.