How to Debug Your Website?

Having a website is crucial for developing your online presence in the modern digital age. Even the best-designed websites, nevertheless, can have issues that harm the user experience.

These flaws might be as simple as broken links and formatting mistakes or as complicated as functioning concerns. Automation testing plays a significant role in addressing such issues.

Debugging becomes necessary in this situation. We will go into the world of website debugging in this extensive blog, examining what it is, why it’s important, and offering a step-by-step tutorial on how to debug your website successfully.

What is Debugging?

Finding, isolating, and repairing faults or bugs in the code or operation of your website is the process of debugging. These mistakes may appear as broken links, inaccurate data displays, malfunctioning forms, or unexpected behavior, among other manifestations.

Web developers and website owners alike need to be adept in debugging in order to make sure their websites run properly and provide a positive user experience.

Importance of Debugging

Determining the cause of an operating system, application, or program’s improper behavior requires extensive debugging. Even if developers follow the same coding guidelines, it’s still quite likely that a new piece of software may have flaws.

It can frequently take longer to debug a new software program than it did to build one. The software flaws that are used the most are always discovered and corrected earliest.

Debugging Approaches

The following are a few methods that programmers frequently use for debugging.

Brute Force Method:

Despite being the most popular debugging method, it is also the least economical. This method involves loading print statements into the program to print the intermediate values in the hopes that some of the written values will help you spot the false assertion.

With the use of a symbolic program, commonly known as a source code debugger, this approach becomes much more systematic because it makes it simple to verify the values of various variables and establish breakpoints and watchpoints for quick variable value checks.

Backtracking:

Additionally, it is a rather typical strategy. With this method, the source code is deduced backward until the error is found, starting from the statement at which an error symptom has been found.

Unfortunately, the number of possible backward ways will expand and should become unimaginably enormous as the diversity of supply lines to be derived back increases, limiting the use of this methodology.

Cause Elimination Method:

This method involves developing a list of potential factors that may have contributed to the error symptom and conducting tests to rule out every error. Package fault tree analysis is a related method of separating the error from the error symptom.

Program Slicing:

Backtracking is a good analogy for this strategy. Here, process slices are used to condense the search house. A portion of a program is the set of supply lines that come before a statement that will affect the value of a particular variable at that statement.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Website Debugging

For both web developers and website owners, being able to debug your website is an essential ability. It entails locating and repairing bugs in the functionality or coding of your website to make sure it functions properly and offers the best user experience.

We will break down the debugging procedure into specific paragraphs in this step-by-step guide to make it simpler for you to understand and apply.

Step 1: Determine the issue

The first and most crucial step in troubleshooting your website is identifying the problem. The initial stage in this approach is frequently identifying the problem’s symptoms.

These warning indicators can take the form of error messages, broken features, unexpected behavior, or anything else that doesn’t act the way you would anticipate your website to. User reviews and reports can also be extremely helpful in assisting you in identifying the problem areas.

Step 2: Recreate the Problem

The next step after identifying a problem is to make an effort to reproduce it repeatedly. By replicating the situation, you can discover the conditions and steps that led to it. By continually repeating the issue, you can discover more about the root causes of the issue.

Step 3: Check the Console of your Browser

A console that displays error and warning information is one of the developer tools offered by modern web browsers. Search the developer console of the browser for any error messages that might be connected to the issue.

The lines of code where the problems occurred and other useful information about what might be the issue are frequently included in these warnings.

Step 4: Work on your Code

Review the appropriate codes on your website once you have a general idea of where the issue might be. Inconsistencies in logic, grammatical errors, or improper data handling in your code should all be looked for and fixed. Pay close attention to the code sections that relate to the issue you’re trying to solve.

Step 5: Utilize Debugging Tools

Use the tools and methods that your web development environment provides. The well-known web development environments Visual Studio Code and Chrome DevTools have robust debugging capabilities.

They let you to set breakpoints, view variables, and run code execution, which aid in identifying the issue and helping you to resolve it.

LambdaTest is an AI-powered test orchestration and execution platform. It empowers you to conduct both manual and automated tests on a 3000+ of browsers, and operating system including real device cloud.

One of LambdaTest’s exceptional offerings is LT Debug, a user-friendly developer tool that revolutionizes the debugging process.

Installing LT Debug is a breeze; simply visit the LT Debug Chrome Extension page and effortlessly add the necessary Chrome extension, granting you access to its features without any unnecessary complications.

Here are some compelling reasons why LT Debug from LambdaTest stands out as an exceptional debugging tool:

• Swiftly manipulate request or response headers by adding, deleting, or modifying them, enabling rapid header testing.
• Apply specific URL filter conditions to block HTTP requests as needed.
• Effectively manage network speed for each request with network throttling capabilities.
• Easily add or remove query parameters to fine-tune your testing.
• Employ the redirect request tool to configure URL redirection to your preferred web address.
• Seamlessly switch between various user-agent strings for efficient testing.
• Experience instant webpage simulations upon injecting CSS or JS scripts into the console.
• For rapid cross-domain Ajax requests in websites and web applications, simply include the (Access-Control-Allow-Origin:*) rule in your response header.
• Remove content security policy headers from any website or web page using the content security policy feature.

Step 6: Examine Conflicts with Third-party Websites

On a vast number of websites, third party libraries, plugins, and integrations are used. Conflicts between these elements, though, can be troublesome. Try disabling 3rd party components for a period of time to see if the issue persists. You’ll be able to identify whether a 3rd party component is at fault for the issue.

Step 7: Test on Many Devices

In an age of diverse gadgets and screen sizes, it is essential to test your website across a range of devices, including smartphones, tablets, and multiple desktop resolutions.

Since responsive design mistakes can significantly harm user experience, thorough testing guarantees that your website is usable and accessible on all platforms.

Step 8: Prioritize and record

When troubleshooting, make sure to take careful note of the issues you encounter. Record the signs, possible causes, and methods of reproduction.

Sort these issues according to their impact on usability and user experience to determine their priority. If you keep your records organized, you can resolve each problem more quickly and effectively.

Step 9: Fix the Problem

Once you’ve identified the main cause of the problem, make the necessary changes to your code. A thorough approach should be taken when making adjustments, taking in mind the potential effects on your website. Make sure your website is thoroughly tested once changes are made to guarantee the issue has been resolved.

Step 10: Again, Test

After making changes, it’s crucial to test your website extensively to make sure the issue has been resolved. To prevent a recurrence, review the steps taken to reproduce the issue. Testing frequently aids in confirming the success of your debugging efforts.

Step 11: Track Any Regressions

Continue checking your website for regression even after a problem has been resolved. Updates to third-party components or changes to other areas of your codebase have the potential to resurface problems that have already been fixed. The stability of your website over the long run is ensured by routine monitoring.

Mistakes to Avoid While Debugging

To promote a more successful and efficient debugging process, you should be aware of the following typical mistakes when debugging your website:

Ignoring User Feedback

User feedback might offer insightful information about problems you might not have found on your own. Don’t ignore user feedback, and take it into account when debugging.

Making Excessively Rapid Changes

It’s tempting to make several modifications at once when debugging to address various problems. The problem-solving modification may be difficult to pinpoint using this method, though. Before moving on to the next change, properly test the first one.

Failure to Backup your Code

It’s a good idea to make backups of your code or to utilize version control tools like Git before making changes. This makes sure that if your changes cause new problems, you may quickly return to a previous condition.

Cross-Browser Testing Ignored

Assuming that one browser is the only one where your website functions flawlessly can cause compatibility problems. Cross-browser testing should always be done to guarantee a consistent user experience.

Ignoring Users of Mobile Devices

You risk leaving out a sizable percentage of your audience if you only concentrate on desktop testing. It’s important to test on different devices because mobile users can experience particular problems.

Conclusion

In order to keep a website dependable and user-friendly, debugging is an essential step. You can make sure that your website runs without a hitch, has a terrific user experience, and is secure by carefully following the recommendations in this article and avoiding typical debugging mistakes.

In order to handle problems quickly and maintain your website operating normally in the always changing digital environment, regular debugging should be an essential component of your web development and maintenance routine.

Keep in mind that debugging involves more than just repairing issues; it also entails providing your audience with a professional and trustworthy online presence.