We're going to be some research, and possibly an event, around tools and services for monitoring and testing your web site e.g. uptime, accessibility, metadata and so on. 

The following are players that we're aware of - any others we should be including?

- Atwatch
- Gomez
- Keynote
- Maxamine
- Silk Tide
- Site Confidence
- Site Morse
- Watchfire
- Webmetrics

Regards

Ashley Friedlein
CEO, E-consultancy.com

http://www.moniforce.com/

Ashley,

What you propose to undertake is a HUGE task given the breath of your definition - you might want to think about breaking it down into smaller chunks.

The most valuable workshop you could have is 'How to evaluate 'the right' tool'.

The different types of testing below are very specialised - functional is the easiest and load, performance and stress testing are the most specialised. Out of the entire lot, a CPS qualified LoadRunner specialist is the most unique and rare skill.

I could write a page or two on just explaining the difference between all of these and the 'types' of tools required. 

-  Load/stress/saturation testing
-  Performance testing
-  Test automation
-  Monitoring - includes uptime
-  Functional - such as broken links
-  Accessibility - this covers valid markup

Most companies make the same mistake when using testing tools - they buy a tool and then work out what they need it for. It's absolutely vital to work out what you are trying to achieve and then define your test requirements. Only then can you evaluate a list of tools for each requirement. One vendor will rarely be the most approproate for everything. In fact I've never implemented every tool within a toolset for a particular company.

If you just want people to add to your list then you might want to consider some of the biggest test tools vendors on the market, namely Mercury Interactive and Rational. These don't come cheap but we use some of their tools for load, stress and performance testing and test automation as they are 'usually' the most appropriate. We've been doing this for years and still have an entire team dedicated to this type of work - but we don't offer these services as you will know, so I'm not trying to sell them!!

You will find an extensive list of accessibility tools at http://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/existingtools.html#Evaluation  

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Another testing tool that's just as important is a defect tracking tool. This type of tool can be anything from a simple excel spreadsheet to something more complex such Mercury Test Director. Defining the process for defect management is another area that's very specialised as you must be intimate with how the software development lifecycle works.

It's one thing to use tools to find problems, but you need to communicate the problems to the people responsible for resolving them in a timely manner. Reporting tools are also vital because you need to record what code has been changed so you know what to retest without having to check everything. There's lots of other reasons why you need to use a defect tracking tool but you didn't ask about that LOL.

Hope this helps

Paul
Segala

Deri, you sell tools so I'm not surprised you disagree. We've always been independent which is why we don't partner with vendors.

I'm not recommending Mercury tools for anything in particular, my advice to Ashley was to 'add them to his list'. You shouldn't ignore the most widely used testing tools worldwide!

BTW LoadRunner is a Mercury tool, not 'another' tool as your note suggests.

Unfortunately I'm not familar with your tools :)

Paul

We use www.server-monitoring.co.uk for our site uptime monitoring and alerting. They seem like a small company, but have been very responsive to support issues and feedback about the service, and it is relatively inexpensive.