Troubleshooting, Bug Fixing and Performance

Chris Mendez -

I come across tools all the time. Tools to help me build, tools to help me maintain, tools for optimization, tools to measure performance, tools to measure audience or user demand. Below are a few suite of tools I use whenever I'm troubleshooting a bug or trying to improve the performance of a web app.

Troubleshooting

  • Is it Down or Just Me? can help you quickly determine if a website is down or maybe it's just your internet connection.

Quality

HTTP Headers

  • Analyze HTTP Headers - This tool is great for helping you, Full Stack Developer, understand the quality of your HTTP headers and requests.

Security

SSL

  • SSL server tests - This website is great for helping you, DevOps, understand where the vulnerabilities lie on your website.

Errors

  • Crashlytics for crashes - Crashlytics is excellent for keeping a log of how many users are crashing due to technical errors in your app.
  • Down or Me - This website will help you determine if a website is down or if it's your browser, OS, computer, Wifi connection, etc.

Performance

General Performance

  • Page load time - This is a Google Chrome extension that gives you a very neutral page load reading.
  • Website speed test This website is great at giving you an actual performance grade.
  • Cloudflare Analytics - Cloudflare is great for providing you with a suite of DevOps and Reporting tools on the health of your website.
  • Apache Benchmark
  • Request Log Analyzer This tool is incredible. It reads your Apache or Nginx log files and presents an easy to read report on the performance of your server.
  • Nginx error log parser I wrote this little ruby script that will parse an error log and help you count errors, ip addresses, etc.
  • Load Impact is great for load testing.

Image Performance

  • Image performance tests - Pageweight is great for helping you determine if the file size on your images are hurting the user experience.

IP Forensics

IP Checking

Sometimes your server might get high with a tons of requests from a specific IP address. Here area few tools to figure out whether you should whitelist them or block them.