Huge update: folders, groups, progress and much more

Today we're pleased to reveal a big update to Insites. Almost every area of the tool has been improved in some way.

Folders and Views

Insites now has an all-new interface for arranging and comparing your websites: Folders allow you to arrange your websites in a custom structure. You can now drag and drop your websites into folders, and create as many folders as you wish. Simply click the New Folder button to create one. Websites can belong to one or more folders. For example, you could have a folder for "Competitors", and another folder for "Asia-Pacific" - you might want a website to belong to both. To do this just drag a website into a folder, and hold down the Alt key to indicate you want to copy it instead of move it. Within folders you can now create custom "views", which allow you to choose what information you'd like to view from all of your sites. For example, you might have an SEO view that focuses on key metrics like backlinks, shares, and duplicate content; a different Accessibility view could focus on metrics like your WCAG compliance. To create a view, just click the + button in the list of tabs for a folder: You can edit the current view by clicking the Edit button at the top right of the view: Note to edit folders and views you must be an account owner. Folders and views replace tags and leaderboards from earlier versions.

Permissions and Groups

Our permission system has been redesigned to be faster and easier to use. Insites now supports groups of users. Previously you had to grant rights - say, to see a report - to each user individually. Now, you can simply grant rights to "everyone", or to a custom group of users. We've simplified how user permissions work. Instead of a selection of checkboxes, a user now has one of these three roles:

• User - normal user, can only do what you explicitly allow them to
• Creator - can also create websites
• Owner - can do everything, including manage all websites, admin users, and admin folders

Users and groups can be granted specific permissions for a given report, which are:

• Viewer - can view the report
• Contributor - can also mark issues as approved, rejected etc.
• Manager - can also configure the report

Using this system, you could make the group "Everyone" (all users) a viewer of a given report, and make specific users "Contributors". If a user belongs to multiple groups, they get the 'best' permission they've been granted for a given report. We redesigned the interface for adding users. You can now add many users at once, and specify a custom message to each when you invite them. If you're the account owner, click on the top right menu, Users, and Invite Users.

New Inspector with rapid switching

We've completely rewritten our Inspector - the area where you view results on a page - to be faster and easier to use on smaller screens. If you're viewing a page in the Inspector, you can now see results from other tests, and swap between them with a simple drop down menu: Red items are confirmed issues, yellow are potential issues.

Progress and cancellation

You can now see when a report is being tested and how far along that test is. A progress bar appears in the bottom left corner: You can also cancel a running report: click on the progress bar and click the red X that appears.

Testing individual pages

Sometimes you want to test specific pages - maybe even webpages that Insites won't find by itself (e.g. landing pages). You can now do this easily, by clicking Retest and selecting Specific page(s):

Potential broken links

The broken links test introduces the concept of potentially broken links, i.e. links which look like they point to the wrong place, but which a computer can't test automatically. The most common example is a link like <a href="#">. Strictly speaking, such a link points to the top of the current page, which can be valid but is often leftover temporary code from development. Alternatively, such links may be overridden using JavaScript to perform some function, e.g. to open a modal dialog. Insites prompts when it encounters these, as ideally you should test them manually.

Troubleshooting difficult websites

Previously if a website failed to test in Insites it could be hard to figure out why. We've made a huge range of improvements to help:

• Insites checks websites up front for common issues. If you type in a web address that points somewhere else, for example, we tell you and suggest corrections before you go any further.
• Insites checks for log in up front. If a website uses HTTP Authentication, Insites will automatically ask you for your login details before testing the website.
• Insites explains what it sees if it can't test a site. If Insites is unable to find any pages for a website, instead of a report it will display a detailed breakdown of exactly what it experienced, e.g. if it was redirected, what links it saw, what it rejected and so on.
• Insites doesn't score broken sites. If a website is untestable, Insites used to try to score it anyway, which was confusing. We no longer do this.

We've also made numerous improvements to Insites which allow it to test more difficult websites than ever before, including new configuration options that can make Insites more tolerant of some websites.

Report logs

You can now view what reports have been run in your account, when they occurred, how long they took, and more. Click on the drop menu in the top right corner, and click Report log:

Postal address detection

The Contact details test now detects postal addresses in the UK and US. This is in addition to the phone numbers and emails we already detected.

All new testing engine

You can't see it, but all of our testing technology has received a drastic upgrade. Insites is now faster, more reliable, and more capable of running more configurable tests in the future.

Free demo and self-serve

As of today, we're allowing anyone to sign up for a free demo of Insites which lets you explore some demo reports we've created for you. Demo users can also sign up for a paid version with a credit or debit card. Currently you can test websites with up to 100 pages this way - if you want more, you need to contact us.

What's next?

Much of what we've done here allows us to develop new things faster. You can expect a lot more from us soon, including:

• Alerts
• PDF export
• Much more configurable reports