There should be no bugs in a high-quality, reliable website. But identifying and eliminating all the bugs is a very extensive, effort-consuming, responsible task that may not always do the trick even after a couple of bug-fixing iterations. Bugs are nasty and some can be harder to detect and figure out than others. The eventual cost of bugs remaining in the code, however, can be even nastier (both in terms of budget and priceless reputation).
This is why Drupal specialists should employ efficient bug-fixing strategies in order to efficiently tackle even the most bug-ridden codes and eliminate complex bugs early on.
Getting Rid of Those Bugs in Time
Right off the bat, we may say from the specialist’s perspective that bugs should be treated and fixed dynamically and continuously. This means that the traditional waterfall approach is quite outdated and inferior in overall efficiency to the Agile approach. Agile bug-fixing is a very logical approach because bugs may appear continuously and even result from previous bug-fixing efforts.
More so, certain bugs may be detected only during specific software production phases and Drupal website maintenance initiatives. Thus, lots of new buggy stuff may appear right after the website goes live and gains some initial traffic. Other bugs may also appear later on when the traffic reaches a certain mark and intensity. So this is where you need to stay active in your efforts to achieve as polished out and perfected solutions as possible.
Thankfully, there are two major Agile-based Drupal bug fixing strategies that can make your life easier.
Bugs prioritization
Bugs must be properly prioritized in order to avoid the uncontrolled organic growth of reported bugs in the backlog. The main indicators of bug prioritization are usually severity and priority itself. Priority may be derived either based on severity or on other business aspects (e.g., technical importance, user demand, etc). With this system in hand, you can start categorizing bugs from critical to least prioritized.
Thus, a bug with the highest priority and severity properties can be deemed critical (i..e, deserving the foremost attention) and so on:
- Critical - severe bugs that provoke system or feature failures and cannot be worked around. This is, basically, a situation when there is a bug that may as well make the whole solution unusable without the involvement of development specialists (like unexpected shutdowns and crashes, large portions of software that don’t work, etc.).
- High-priority - bugs that negatively affect system aspects or features and have difficult workarounds or no workarounds at all. These are nasty bugs that may undermine certain software functionality bits and features, hindering the whole performance as a result (e.g., conflicting features, underdeveloped capacities, and other issues that result in significant errors which can be fixed by specialists);
- Mid-priority - bugs of minor negative effects that may even include simple cosmetic errors. Such bugs may be limited by the UI design or concern some minor software conflicts (for instance, buttons may not respond to user requests with proper animations, directories may be messed up, spawning content representation issues, etc.);
- Low-priority - bugs with the least negative effect on overall performance, such as spelling errors and whatnot. Many mistakes and errors may be hidden in all the visual and written content. Low-priority bugs may be spawned by improper content box dimensions, content embedding definition mistakes, and other minor mishaps.
Bugs visualization
Using bug tracking tools should not be underestimated or neglected. The specialized tools allow managing bugs in an Agile manner while keeping a prioritized backlog and visualizing bugs via convenient dashboards.
Bugzilla, for instance, is a powerful tracking platform for Drupal troubleshooting from the Mozilla team. Bugzilla capabilities and features can be tailored to specific requirements while also offering advanced search through data listings, centralized ongoing bug-fixing initiatives tracking, content duplication battling tools, as well as Audit Tracking and Workflow Management tools.
Then, there is also Bugsnag - a solution for software stability monitoring that helps a lot with tech decision-making. It helps group similar bugs for further segmented analysis, enable notifications upon data exceptions, use audit trail for acquiring additional information for debugging, and more.
On top of all that, Redmine is an open-source, free-of-charge tool that enables you to conveniently manage multiple projects at once. In nature, it is a full-on in-depth customizable platform that helps battle bugs through clear user role separation, a whole separate issue tracking system (which even tracks the time spent on debugging initiatives), and provides wikis/forums and RSS feeds/email notifications per project.
Trust the Professionals
Whatever bug-fixing approach you are looking to implement, make sure to only let seasoned professionals do any manipulations. Contact Alpha Web Group for high-quality bug-fixing services. We have seasoned experts ready to take on polishing up your solution through frontend/backend Drupal bug fixing, hacked website recovery, and more - so make the first step.