Upon registration, RAMP will automatically begin crawling your website to look for pages to scan. However, there are some cases in which you will need to do this process manually by choosing a Page Discovery Mode.
In this article, we’ll cover:
Choosing a Page Discovery Mode
Troubleshooting Page Scanning Issues
Alternative Methods for Importing Pages
Choosing a Page Discovery Mode
If RAMP did not automatically find pages to scan, you can trigger it with one of the following.
Pages Tab – Setup Guide
- Navigate to the Pages tab and select Automatic (or Advanced) Page Discovery Mode in the setup guide.
Option 1: Automatic
RAMP will automatically search your site for pages to monitor. You can always add or remove pages later on. This option is recommended because it is the quickest and easiest way to add pages to RAMP.
Option 2: Advanced
Tell RAMP which XML sitemap you’d like to import pages from. Our system will continuously monitor this list and import new pages as they are added to it.
An XML Sitemap is a file that lists your site’s URLs so that search engines can more quickly and effectively crawl it. Sitemaps help search engines and other website crawlers (like Google and AccessibleWebBot) find and understand your website’s URLs, the content on each page, and the relationships between pages.
For websites with multiple sitemaps, Advanced Page Discovery under “Configure Page Discovery” allows you to control which sitemap RAMP adds pages from.
For more information on finding your sitemap file, please refer to our User Guide article on Finding and Adding Your Sitemap.
Don’t have a sitemap? Jump to Creating A Sitemap
Option 3: Off
When Page Discovery Mode is set to “Off,” RAMP will not automatically import or scan pages.
If you’re only trying to scan a subset of pages from a website with a large number of pages, set Page Discovery Mode to “Off” and either add pages manually or import pages using a CSV file containing the pages you want RAMP to start scanning first.
Pages Tab – Add Button
- Alternatively, you can add pages individually by navigating to the Pages tab and clicking “Add.”
RAMP Settings
- Finally, you can do so by going to RAMP Settings within your website’s RAMP account and navigate to the Automated Scanning tab.
Troubleshooting Page Scanning Issues
Why aren’t pages being added or scanned after selecting “Automatic” or “Advanced” Page Discovery Mode?
Robots.txt Denies Access
Check your Robots.txt file for restrictions or crawl delays that might interfere with RAMP’s ability to scan your website. Sometimes websites will restrict sitemap crawling in their robots.txt file. If your robots.txt restricts access and disallows sitemap crawling, Accessible Web RAMP won’t be able to scan your site automatically.
In many cases (but not all), RAMP will notify you on the Page Details page if a robots.txt restriction is preventing crawling.
If a restriction in your robots.txt file is blocking automatic scanning in RAMP, you can grant AccessibleWebBot permission to scan your site. This should allow RAMP to begin scanning the website.
If your sitemap is unable to scan or you don’t see any scanned pages in your RAMP account within 24 hours, contact our team for assistance setting up your account.
Absent or Malformed Sitemap
If your website lacks a sitemap, don’t panic. It is common for preview/staging environments to lack sitemaps. If possible, we recommend creating a sitemap XML file.
If you cannot create a sitemap file, you will have to import pages into RAMP either individually or by uploading a CSV file.
Incorrect Domain
If you’ve added your sitemap in “Advanced” Page Discovery Mode, but RAMP is still unable to scan your pages, check that you’ve entered the correct domain for your website. The domain you entered for your website must match the domain of your sitemap.
If you enter “www.example.com” when your actual domain is “example.com,” RAMP won’t be able to use your sitemap to automatically scan your website. Check the domain you entered to ensure it matches up with your real domain and sitemap.
Extremely Large Sites or Multiple Sitemaps
While Accessible Web RAMP is capable of scanning and monitoring entire websites, sites with an exceedingly large number of pages may not be able to automatically scan.
If you think your site may be too large to scan automatically, contact us for help setting up your account. The upper limit on page scans can be overridden with approval.
Alternative Methods for Importing Pages
“Automatic” or “Advanced” Page Discovery Modes are the most efficient and accurate way to import pages into Console. Nonetheless, there are alternative ways to add pages to RAMP in the event that your site lacks a sitemap XML file and you’re unable to create on.
You can also turn Page Discovery “Off” and import pages individually by URL path or in bulk by uploading a CSV file containing the sitemap paths of the pages you want to add to RAMP.
Additionally, if you’re having trouble adding pages to Accessible Web RAMP, you can always contact us for complimentary onboarding assistance.
Bulk Import Pages Using a CSV File
You can also bulk import web pages by uploading a CSV file of your URL paths. This can be done under the Pages tab of your RAMP account as well.
How to bulk import pages from a CSV file:
“Pages” > “Add” > “CSV Import”
Importing pages by CSV file is useful if a website lacks a functioning sitemap. This method of uploading pages gives the website owner more control over which pages are added to RAMP and when. Users on our Small plan, for example, may choose to upload pages by CSV file so they can control exactly which pages they scan first without going over their 1,000-page scans/month limit.
The downside to importing pages via CSV file or individually is that you’ll need to manually add any new web pages to RAMP. When RAMP is linked to a sitemap, it automatically updates in response to sitemap changes, like the removal or addition of pages.
For help putting together and uploading a CSV file, get in touch with us.
Individually Add Pages by URL
Individual pages can be added to RAMP from the Pages tab. Just provide the URL path of the page you want to import and RAMP will do the rest.
How to upload individual pages in Accessible Web RAMP:
“Pages” > “Add” > “Single Page”
Adding pages individually works best for small websites or in instances where you want to pick and choose the pages you upload.
If you have a larger website and are trying to use a Small plan, we recommend adding pages individually to conserve your monthly page scans. Adding pages individually also allows you to prioritize your highest-traffic pages first for scanning.
Complementary Account Setup
Contact Us for Assistance
Troubleshooting & Frequently Asked Questions
Have questions you aren’t seeing the answers to? Get in contact with us.
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My site currently has an overlay on it that performs DOM manipulation. How does RAMP handle this situation?
RAMP’s accessibility scanner tries its best to scan a webpage in the exact state that a typical new user will see it in. This means that if you have an overlay on your website, our scanner will attempt to load that overlay and the changes it makes to the HTML.
However, due to the way the overlay widgets work we may end up scanning the page before the DOM manipulation occurs. Here are some more technical details about this:
Knowing when a webpage is fully loaded is actually a difficult problem to solve. For example, a page might “look” fully loaded but actually there is a big gif loading in the background that suddenly pops into view 5 seconds later. Or maybe a webpage is in a continual state of loading, say, with a live chat that’s constantly loading in new chats. Or an analytics service sending pings to and from the browser every few seconds. How can you know which network requests will update the page and which won’t? You mostly can’t!
Because of this, our scanner has to draw the line in the sand somewhere and say “this is what a fully loaded web page looks like”. For our scanner, we define a webpage as “loaded” when there are 2 or fewer pending network requests (think loading images, stylesheets, gif, fonts, analytics, data fetching, etc) OR we’ve waited for 2 minutes (subject to change) and the page hasn’t made any significant progress. Once one of those conditions are met, we do our best to test the webpage in whatever state it may be in.
It’s important to note that the “final 2″ network requests are typically things like third party analytics or, sometimes, may be your overlay scripts. If overlay scripts are particularly heavy and are consistently some of the last things to load (and execute!!) on your website, you may experience “flaky” testing within RAMP depending on whether that overlay script was fully loaded or not.
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Why am I still not seeing pages from my website show in RAMP?
If you are not seeing any pages within 24 hours after adding your sitemap to your Website Settings, then there may be a problem scanning your sitemap. Make sure that the sitemap you have specified is accessible to all users (ie. not behind any authentication), and that it contains valid sitemap xml. If you have verified those items, then your site may be blocking our bot. Make sure you don’t have any entries in your robots.txt file that would block our bot from reaching your sitemap. You can learn more about our bot here.
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Why aren’t pages from my website showing up in RAMP?
Our bot currently scans sites for new pages twice a day, this is subject to change, but may be the reason you aren’t seeing the page yet. If the page still isn’t showing up after 24 hours, make sure that the page is present in the sitemap that you have specified in your Website Settings.
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What is “Active Scanning Job” and how does Accessible Web RAMP schedule scanning jobs?
“Active Scanning Job” will show the current, automatically scheduled scanning job being processed. Accessible Web RAMP will periodically check your website for pages that need to be scanned based on the what you have specified as their preferred scanning frequency, and when they were last scanned. When it finds one, it will group it with other pages that are also due (or close to due) and scan them together in a “scanning job”. You can expect new pages to be scanned (or at least scheduled in a scanning job) within an hour of them being detected. If you manually request a single page to be scanned, you can expect the scan to complete much quicker than this, likely within 5 minutes.
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What rules are being checked during the accessibility scan?
Accessible Web uses Axe Core to perform accessibility scans of the pages you request. We run the scan on your page and check for violations of WCAG 2.1 AA by default. If you would like to change the rules that we are checking for, you can adjust these settings in the RAMP Settings tab of you website. We support WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 in A, AA and AAA, as well as best practices.
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Is there a way to manually trigger a scan of a page?
Yes! Navigate to the page within your RAMP account, and click the Scan Page button.