Steps to be followed while testing performance of a Drupal site

Performance testing is one of the testing methods which is carried out to ensure the quality of the product/website we deliver. It mainly focuses on the speed of the application, possible load the product can support, amount of stress the website can handle, user's access to the website etc.
Following are the some of the checklists that you can refer while carrying out the performance testing of your application. Read on to know more.

Drupal Core Updates:

• The latest released version of Drupal can be tested by giving the format URL/CHANGELOG.txt on the browser.

HTML Errors on Home Page:

• The HTML errors can be found by pasting the URL of the site on w3c validator- http://validator.w3.org/

Page Load Speeds:

• Loading speed of the page can be tested by pasting the URL on http://tools.pingdom.com.

Size of HTML on Home Page:

• Size of HTML can be tested by pasting the URL on http://seositecheckup.com/tools/html-page-size-test

CSS / JS Aggregation:

• CSS/JS Aggregation can be tested by pasting the URL on http://tools.pingdom.com.

Size of CSS files on home page:

• Size of CSS files can be tested by pasting the URL on http://tools.pingdom.com

Size of JS files on home page:

• Size of JS files can be tested by pasting the URL on http://tools.pingdom.com

Images on Home Page:

• Images on home page can be tested by pasting the URL on http://tools.pingdom.com

Public Access to Directory Listings

• This can be tested by giving url/sites/modules on the browser. Check whether on loading the page, access denied message is getting displayed or not.

Anonymous User Registration:

• Anonymous user registration can be tested by loading Url/user.

CAPTCHA on Login Page:

• Give url/user. Check captcha on the corresponding loaded page.

CAPTCHA on User Registration Page:

• Give url/user. Check captcha on the corresponding loaded page.

CAPTCHA on Contact Page:

• Check the contact us page for captcha.

Anonymous Access to Comment Form:

• Check whether on loading the page, access denied message is getting displayed or not.

CAPTCHA on Comment Form:

• Check comment form for captcha.

Anonymous Access to Admin Pages:

• Give url/sites/modules. Check whether access denied message is getting displayed or not.

Anonymous Access to Content Administration:

• Give url/admin/content/node. Check whether access denied message is getting displayed or not.

Anonymous Access to Permissions Administration:

• Give url/admin/content/node. Check whether access denied message is getting displayed or not.

Anonymous Access to Views Administration:

• Give url/content. Check whether access denied message is getting displayed or not.

Anonymous Access to Modules Administration:

• Give url/sites/modules. Check whether access denied message is getting displayed or not.

Anonymous Access to Themes Administration:

• Give url/sites/modules. Check whether access denied message is getting displayed or not.

Anonymous Access to Node Creation Pages:

• Give url/sites/modules. Check whether access denied message is getting displayed or not.

www Redirection:

• Load both www.url and url and check whether both of the urls redirect to www.url.

Human Readable Clean URLs:

• Check all URLs of the site.

Unaliased URLs to Aliased URLs Redirection:

• This can be tested by giving url/node/somenumber on browser.

Google Analytics Tracking

1. View the Source code (ctrl +U)
2. Press ctrl + f
3. Type google analytics

Return Status on Page Not Found:

• Give URL/abcdef. Check whether page not found is getting displayed or not.

By doing performance testing, we will get an idea about the typical response time of the application. The testing results can be analysed and used to optimize the performance of the application, which in turn would improve the user experience. This makes performance testing the prime consideration in the field of software testing.